Changing The Future
by CuriousVortex
Summary: In the wake of the kidnap and death of one of the most important men in the world, shinobi from both Leaf and Sand are suddenly and completely gone. in another world, gripped by war and oppression, the Avatar and his companions have no idea that their world is about to turn upside-down. Pairings undecided. Not crackfic. Crossover, obviously. GOING THROUGH OVERHAUL/REWRITE
1. Prologue: Somewhere, Sometime

**My first try at an Avatar/Naruto crossover. Pretty much my first try at anything, to be honest... Don't flame, okay? Please? If you can guess who all these people are merely from my rather vague descriptions, I salute you! Sorry, but Ino, Shino, Sakura, and Tenten aren't coming. Reasons: **

**A. I couldn't fit them into any of the bending nations. If you can, feel free to suggest it, but I don't think I'll get around to adding them. Sorry to all you fans of aforementioned characters. **

**B. I already have enough people crossing over to be getting on with, I think. **

**C. I... didn't feel like it? **

**Hope you like it, even though it's just the prologue, CV**

* * *

_Then, it all vanished. _In a situation like this, there are hundreds of thousands of _millions _of worlds that this particular world could decide to be. It chose one, and things… changed.

_In a tiny, deserted shack somewhere in the conquered Earth Kingdom, a boy opens his round, black eyes, wincing only a little at the agonizing throb of his headache. He blinks around at the dingy room. This isn't his house…_

_In the middle of the North Pole, within a few yards of the huge wall that dominates the landscape, a boy and girl sit unconscious, back to back. The man who found them signals the crew of his patrol boat. _Intruders. _They don't notice when the boy's silvery eyes open, so they aren't ready for the open palm that sends their leader flying…_

_In the Fire Nation, a boy wakes up groggily, staggers wiht difficulty out of his alley, and only manages to walk a few feet before a heavy hand lands on his shoulder. _"_Straighten up, _private_. Congratulations. You are going to fight for the honor and glory of your nation! Get in line! Now _march_!" 'Troublesome…' thinks the boy as the drafting sergeant leads him away…_

_In a dark forest in the middle of nowhere, a pair of eyes is already open. The dark figure bends over the boy who came with him, blue-green eyes dim with worry and dark-lined from some abnormal weariness. What's affecting his companion isn't just illness from crossing over; it's much more serious than that. His brow furrows as the bloody patch on the ground grows, oozing through the other boy's muddy dress clothes. The younger of the two tears his robe hem, bandaging away and methodically- if inexpertly- closing the wound. __Now, to look for help…_

_In the middle of a squalid little prison in the Fire Nation, a boy's wild eyes snap open just as the guards are about to throw him into a holding cell. When they finally get him restrained, they have to bring the fort commander down to show him the gouges in the walls, floor, and ceiling before he believes their story…_

_On a small island considered too unimportant to have a garrison, a girl wakes up in a beautiful glade. She is immediately suspicious, which is why she is not instantly captured by the warriors that drop out of the trees. Her legs betray her as she whirls around and though her stumble is tiny, it is enough. She falls to her attackers, and there's a sharp pain on the back of her head as darkness veils her vision…_

_In a secluded alley, a man is peddling his cabbages innocently when a boy appears out of nowhere in a flash of light and lands on his cart. The boy isn't exactly scrawny, and he wakes slowly in a wreckage of cabbages and wood. Rubbing cabbage juice off the swirling tattoos on his cheeks, he says the first thing that comes to his groggy mind. "Where's dinner gone?"_

_In the Fire Lord's palace, a boy wakens, takes in his surroundings, and jumps to his feet immediately. Any unsuspecting guard who saw his eyes probably would have run away, and you probably couldn't have blamed them. __The black marks in his blood-red eyes whirling dizzyingly, the boy steps out…_

_In the middle of nowhere, a boy with tattoos opens his stunningly blue eyes. He looks around, but sees no one, and with no other option, he chooses a direction and starts walking. He is closer to allies than he thinks…_

_Waves of confusion sweep across the earth like invisible tides as nine shinobi who shouldn't be there open their eyes and change the world…_

* * *

**Comments? Questions? Flames? Humorous wit? Next chapter: (If I ever get around to it...)** **'First Contact'. **


	2. Chapter 1: First Contact

**Chapter ONE! Shorter than I had hoped, but that's not really a problem. Right? Despite the ending, I don't think the next Shinobi they meet will be Temari (Of course, sometimes the story does things that I didn't plan...) If it isn't Temari though, I know who it's going to be. He's male and slightly annoying... **

* * *

Chapter 1: First Contact

Katara was tired. She really didn't want to be doing this, but her brother Sokka had insisted that they _needed_ to have a patrol, that the Fire Nation could strike at _any time_, that just because they were traveling with the Avatar that _didn't_ mean that they could relax… On and on and on…

She came back to herself with a jolt, and just barely avoided tripping over a fallen tree-branch. The entire obstacle-strewn landscape was barely illuminated by the light of the full moon filtering through the lush canopy of the forest, and hindrances only came into view a few seconds before she fell over them.

Katara was just musing to herself that she could probably just limp back to camp and fall into bed and just maybe snatch some sleep, when a bush beside her rustled. She froze, fumbling for her water-bottle, then cringed as it fell to the ground with an extremely audible _thump_. The rustling came again, on her left side this time, and before she could reach down for the fallen water, something happened that nearly made her heart jump right out of her chest. There was suddenly warm breath on her ear as someone leaned in next to her, and a sense of another body's warmth behind her.

"Now," said a mocking whisper as a pair of hands gripped her arms from behind, "-what's a girl like you doin' in a place like this? Got any money?" Katara knew that a few months ago she would have shrieked and tried to run away, but being hunted by Fire Nation troops and captured multiple times has a way of hardening even the most timid heart.

She stomped on her captor's foot, twisted out of his grasp, then reached out for water; completely forgetting that it was a full moon, that she had dropped her water bottle, and that her blood-bending had a nasty way of sneaking up on her.

The boy froze, and as he did so Katara's muscles locked in place, immobilized and out of her control. The girl stared, petrified, at the boy in front of her, who was settled into a stance much like her own and staring at her, looking almost as startled as she did.

He had messy brown hair, badly in need of a cut, and the moonlight glinted off his sharp, catlike black eyes as they darted from her to his hands to the forest around them. His clothes looked like a dress-outfit that had been dragged through several yards of mud, and patches of it were stained with something dark and flaking. Dried blood. Katara shivered, wondering what would have happened to her if she hadn't pulled away.

The boy smiled at her; the kind of smile that means 'I know something you don't', and twitched his fingers. It was a tiny movement, curtailed by the control of Katara's frozen hands, but when he moved his hand, her arms dropped just the tiniest bit. As her hands lowered, the boy was forced down into a crouch, and the movement of _his_ hands sent her stumbling backwards, putting out her hands instinctively to catch herself. As her hand waved wildly, he was forced flat against the ground, and Katara was just thinking that she might actually have _won_ when he raised a trembling hand towards her, and his fingertips flared bright blue. Katara shrieked and slammed his hand back down, but there were sapphire threads fastening his fingers to her arms and legs, and she crashed to the ground a few inches from his face.

The boy smiled cynically at her, rubbing some of the dirt off of his face and onto his slightly less dirty shoulder.

"It was just a question, ja. I didn't say I _wanted _your money."

Katara snarled at him, and he raised his eyebrows, looking unimpressed.

"My sister is scarier than you, ja. At least you can't attack me when we're both like this."

Katara struggled slightly, trying to raise an arm, but the boy scowled in concentration and the glow on his hands brightened. Her hand was forced down again, and she relaxed as her heartbeat slowed and rational thought took over. This boy didn't know she had allies coming. Toph would come looking when she woke up and Katara wasn't back yet, and the two of them were more than capable of taking this boy on.

Aforementioned boy sighed, blowing his hair out of his eyes.

"So… what _are_ you doing out here? I am informed by the people of the town we were driven out of several hours ago that this place has no ninja. If you are _not_ ninja, and you use the puppeteer technique, what are you?"

Katara didn't want to talk to the boy holding her immobilized, but they were face to face, and that last comment was both annoying and senseless. '_What are you' _indeed.

"I'm a Waterbender. Idiot."

Katara glanced up at the sky. The moon was almost set, and then they would both lose control of their Bloodbending. She could probably take this guy on in a fight (they didn't just give the title of 'Waterbending Master' to anybody, after all) but he was an unknown. He might be anyone. Heck, he might even be an ally. Unlikely though. He _could_ be another assassin looking for the Avatar. He could-

"Katara! What are you doing?!"

…Why? Why did it have to be _Sokka_ of all people? Wasn't _Toph_ supposed to go out and search if someone was missing?

The boy looked up as Katara's brother appeared in his limited line of sight.

"Oh. Hello, ja."

Sokka grabbed his wrists and pulled his hands behind his back, then let go abruptly when Katara shrieked and flipped over bodily, struggling to keep her gaze on her brother.

"Sokka! He's a Bloodbender!"

Sokka's eyes widened and he looked up at the full moon, then back down at the boy, who suddenly had a completely blank expression on his face.

"A what?"

Sokka knelt down till he could see the mystery boy's face, glaring at him, putting his hand conspicuously on the hilt of his sword.

"Let. My. Sister. _Loose._"

The boy grinned mockingly at him, then flicked his pointer finger. Katara jerked into a kneeling position, facing away from the boy and her brother.

"Stop!"

The boy did it again, this time with his whole hand, and Katara jolted into a standing position so fast that her bare feet momentarily left the ground. The moon was almost under the horizon, and the gray light of dawn was creeping across the sky. _Nearly there…_

"I could release her, ja. But that would mean that she could control me, but I wouldn't be in control of _her._ I'm not stupid." He sighed, dropping his head to the ground and closing his eyes wearily. "You can tell your friend behind me to come out now. I could sense you people's chakra from a _mile_ away, the way you just let it loose like that."

"What's up with him?" asked Toph, sidling out from behind a tree. Sokka explained about the Bloodbending problem, and they all gazed at the boy intently for several minutes. Then Toph pulled a rock out of the ground and shot it at the back of his head. The boy jerked and lay still, and the faint blue glow on his hands flickered and died. Katara dropped to her knees, then ran over to the others, staring down at him.

"I think…" started Katara, as Sokka pulled a rope out of his pack.

"-That we have a few questions to ask this guy? Yeah, me too."

* * *

It took a long time to get Aang up to date, and by the time they did, the boy was waking up, swearing audibly and staring around the camp with guarded black eyes.

When they finally made their way over to him, Katara had taken the lead, visibly calming herself as they sat in a ring around the boy.

He didn't look up from the ground in front of him, deliberately ignoring them in favor of one of his worn sandals.

Katara made an attempt at a smile, but Toph shoved her out of the way and kicked him. He looked up lazily, slouching against the tree-trunk behind him as though he had nothing better to do than sit here and kick dirt around for the rest of the day.

Katara cleared her throat. _Tough. Tough and determined. _"So, uh-" _I don't know his name, do I? _"-boy."

"Don't call me that," interrupted their captive, looking mildly annoyed. "That's what my… 'father' called me." He grimaced as though he had bitten into something sour.

Sokka rolled his eyes.

"Then what _should _we call you, mystery boy?"

Toph smirked at their self-proclaimed 'leader'. "Whatever you do, you really should give him something to call you. Otherwise, he'll assign you a name, and you _really _don't want that. Know what he calls the last person who attacked us?"

The boy shook his head, looking slightly interested for the first time since he had woken up. "Do tell, ja."

Toph grinned like someone sharing a private joke. "Sparky. Sparky. Boom-Man."

There was silence for half a second, then both of them burst out laughing. Sokka scowled from Toph, who choking into her sleeve, to the boy, whose laughter was dying away into the silent wheezing of someone who's laughing too hard to laugh out loud. The boy finally stopped laughing, regaining his composure slowly, and he nodded authoritatively at the Aang, Katara, and Sokka.

"I'll talk to _her_, ja. The rest of you…" He trailed off pointedly, glancing at the other side of the camp. Sokka opened his mouth to complain, and Aang looked slightly disappointed, but Toph waved them away.

"I can deal with him, guys. If it means he'll talk to one of us, you might as well do it."

By the time they had sat down across the campfire, Toph and the boy were already talking and laughing, and every time one of them caught Sokka watching them, they burst out laughing. They spent almost half an hour talking in hushed voices, and by the time Toph came over to talk to her teammates, the boy looked significantly more cheerful.

Toph dropped down next to Aang, shoving him out of the way for a seat.

"He says that he's sixteen, he has never heard of bending, he's lost his sister and brother, and that we can call him 'Kankuro'. He also says it's not his real name, but you know what I think?"

Toph glanced over at Kankuro, who was staring at the fire vacantly, his face devoid of expression.

"I think he was lying. He's a _very _good liar, but he was lying."

Katara watched as their teenage captive leaned against the tree, staring at the sky now.

"Kankuro then. Did he say where he was from?"

"Nope."

"What about his siblings? Lost _how_? Do you mean they're dead?"

"No, he said 'lost'. I'm certain about that. Hey, Katara?"

"Hmm?"

"What does he look like?"

Katara looked him over critically, then looked away quickly as he caught her staring and gave her a look which clearly said; 'like what you see?' She glared back, then turned sharply back to the rest of the group, her face meditative.

"He does _look _like a 'Kankuro'," she said, shooting the boy a look over her shoulder, "and he-" -but Kankuro cut her off, shouting across the clearing.

"Oy! Got any food, ja?" Aang looked dubiously at the pot of vegetable stew simmering gently on their tiny fire. "Yeah…"

"Great! I haven't eaten since-" Kankuro cut off sharply, then started again, forming the sentence like every word was a potential trap. "...for the last three days." He finished, looking hungrily at the food. Sokka gave him a suspicious glance, but settled down beside the fire anyway. Aang jumped into the branches of one of the trees, then jumped from the top limb, augmenting his jump with a blast of wind.

"APPA! BREAKFAST!" There was a rumbling roar from somewhere in the trees, and for the first time, Kankuro looked truly startled.

"Appa?" Aang landed gently in front of him, floating down on a cushion of air.

"My flying bison! I've got to go find food for him now, because we can't make…enough…here…"

He caught Sokka's venomous glare, and his enthusiastic explanation petered away into muttering. Sokka pulled him aside by a shoulder, and several seconds of frantic conversation took place.

Toph listened for a while, then walked over to Kankuro, who was still looking in the direction Appa's growl had come from, his face preoccupied. Probably wondering what kind of animal made that noise, and whether it was carnivorous. She leaned down until they were face to face.

"If I untie you, are you going to try and run away?"

Kankuro deliberated for a second, then shook his head slowly. _Telling the truth_… mostly. Toph glowered at him, rippling the ground under his feet. It couldn't do any harm to emphasize how serious she was.

"If you _do_ try to escape, you will be sorry. I'm telling you this because I like you, and if you try anything, you'll wake up buried to the neck and extremely sore. Okay?" Kankuro looked impressed for a second, then he grinned at her, tugging at the ropes gently.

"Fine. Untie me so I can eat? I understand the consequences of escape, my arms are going to sleep, and I am so _incredibly_ hungry." Toph walked to the back of the tree, feeling for the knots. There was a pause, then the girl's voice echoed across the clearing.

"Hey, Katara? Could you undue some of these knots?"

* * *

Kankuro, as it turned out, wasn't lying about being hungry. He devoured the food, and he was so busy eating he didn't even notice the others whispering and shooting him glances. He finished his third bowl, looked innocently around the camp, then fell abruptly to one side as though stunned.

As the benders stared at him in stunned silence, the fall morphed smoothly into a roll, and he jerked the ropes on his wrists out of Sokka's relaxed grip, tugged off the knots securing his hands, and jumped straight up and into the trees.

Aang was the first to recover, leaping into the trees with a _whoosh_ of displaced air, and Katara and Toph set off through the forest, the latter muttering about ungrateful idiots and interrupted breakfasts.

Sokka vaulted onto Appa's back, taking to the air just in time to see Kankuro leap effortlessly across a ten foot gap and vanish into the trees. Aang was close behind, and the dust cloud that Toph was kicking up was looping around, cutting the boy off in front.

"Oy, Gaara!"

At least, it _would_ have cut him off. But he wasn't running anymore.

Kankuro was standing on top of a crooked rock which jutted at a sharp angle out of the landscape, forming a tiny cave. There were golden walls of something that looked like rock forming a three-sided shelter, and the remains of a small fire surrounded by crushed grass. And something that looked like a huge gourd hanging off an unnaturally abrupt crag on the rock.

As the bison landed, another boy crawled out of the makeshift shelter, squinting into the sun at the backlit figure on the top of the rock. His voice, when he spoke, was tired and exasperated, verging on angry.

"Kankuro? I had hoped as my brother, you had learned punctuality. What took you so long?"

Kankuro leapt down, then knelt and crawled under the rock, coming out with three scrolls.

"There are people after me, ja. Deal with it please?"

The boy sighed, rubbing his temples wearily.

"Nii-san… Why is it that everywhere you go you make enemies?"

Kankuro opened a scroll, looked at the contents for a second, then put it back hurriedly, picking up another.

"This is definitely _not_ the time, Gaara. One of them uses Doton without hand-seals, and she'll know where I've gone. Just get your sand, ja."

The boy called Gaara rolled his eyes and stretched out a hand toward the golden walls of their shelter, and they dissolved into rivulets of fine sand, which writhed and twisted around his feet like snakes.

Kankuro abandoned his scroll as a tremor ran through the earth, shouting something to his brother. The sand flew up around them, and the ground underneath their feet _exploded_; earth churning and crumbling to sand.

Behind the rock, Toph dropped her hands, listening intently for the vibrations of two people who suddenly weren't there.

Gaara lowered his arms and the floating platform of sand sank with them, absorbing the quicksand Toph had created into a quickly growing cloud of sand that hovered around him like a golden mist.

He and his brother landed smoothly, with the collected attitudes of people who had done this kind of thing before. Gaara straightened slowly to his full height, staring at the dumbfounded benders with an expression that was almost inquisitive.

"Should I kill them?"

Gaara was… strange. His shaggy blood-red hair was much neater than his brother's, framing a thin, pale face with high cheekbones and piercing blue-green eyes with heavy black rings around them. He had no eyebrows, Katara realized, and while it wasn't strange enough to be alarming, it gave an outlandish feeling of _wrong_-ness to his face. He shook back the sleeves of a dirt blue and white robe, then finger-combed his hair out of his eyes, exposing a scar shaped into the symbol 'love'.

The sand swirled threateningly, shifting and spreading until it was under their feet, winding gently around their legs.

Aang jumped into the nearest tree, pulling Katara with him, and Toph raised herself a circular platform of rock to stand on, instinctively mistrustful of the animated sand.

"Well?"

Gaara looked at his brother, who was crouching on the sandy ground, staring at each of his five previous captors in turn. The redhead's question seemed to shake him out of his meditative state however, and he frowned and stood again.

"Gaara, just because they're chasing me doesn't mean you have to kill them. That's the memories of Shukaku talking, remember?"

His younger brother frowned down at him doubtfully, sweeping a wave of sand up to block a wave of stones from Toph. The sand condensed, turning once again into the golden stone that had formed the two boys' makeshift shelter, and the boulders shattered against it.

"Why are they chasing you?" Gaara raised his non-existent eyebrows. "Did you steal something from them? I had assumed that you were joking. Temari, as you have so often put it, will be 'ticked off' with you. I assume you know what the penalty is likely to be?"

Kankuro winced. "Death by beating to a bloody pulp, ja? Assuming she still has her fan, of course."

Katara lashed out with her water, taking a neat chunk out of the sand-turned-stone, and Gaara finally looked at her, his expression curious and vaguely irate.

"What quarrel do you have with my brother? I should hope it has been drilled into his head sufficiently not to steal, and that you are missing no goods on that account, but I see no reason for dangerous jutsu-" He shattered another rock without looking, then gestured at Toph. "-such as these- to be brought into play."

Katara thought this over, holding her water ready to attack in case the boy got any ideas.

"He knew we were traveling with the Avatar. We can't afford to let other people know where we are. If you are against the Fire Nation in this war, it's in your best interests- in the _world's_ best interests- that you don't tell anyone where we are, or even that you've met us."

Gaara frowned at her, his expression that of one maligned.

"But my country is in alliance with the land of Fire, and we have been for nearly the last three years. It is in my authority, and our countries are at peace. There is no war."

Kankuro scowled at Katara as well, tossing his scroll absent-mindedly from hand to hand as his brother's sand snaked back into it's gourd.

"We wouldn't be staying here at all if we could find our way home, ja. It's too enclosed here, no sand at all. What's the 'Avatar'?"

Sokka started to speak, but Kankuro raised a hand to delay him, shaking his head.

"Wait. Let me ask all the questions before you start answering. What is a 'Waterbender'? What is the 'Avatar'? Why is it a big deal that we now know- which I don't mind telling you, we didn't before- that the little tattooed kid _is_ the Avatar? How do you do jutsu without hand-seals, and since when are we at war? And while I'm thinking of questions, where is the land of Wind? I miss the desert, ja."

He crawled under the rock, collected all three scrolls, and slotted them into a bandage holster expertly.

"-and do you have a map? Because to be completely honest, we're lost."

"And hungry."

"Well, _you're_ hungry, ja. I already ate."

Kankuro cringed slightly under Gaara's accusing stare.

"Well, they had food, and it wasn't like I could go and _get_ you. His methods of killing anything edible are a bit… messy," he explained, "-and anything sharp that I could use to kill food is poisoned. I'm immune to most of my poisons, but Gaara… it wouldn't be good."

Katara slowly guided the water back in her bottle. These two didn't look like they would be attacking any time soon.

"You could have lived off of fruit and vegetables. You don't _need_ meat."

Sokka slapped a hand over her mouth, his face shocked that she would even suggest such things."Katara! Don't say that!"

Gaara looked from one to the other, and for the first time, something like a smile graced his face.

"I would assume that you are siblings? Your family dynamic appears to work differently than ours. If Kankuro had cut Temari off like that, the servants would be cleaning blood off the walls for hours afterwards."

Katara frowned at Sokka, who edged away slowly.

"Oh, don't think I'm not tempted sometimes. What method does… your sister-?"

Gaara nodded, his eyes clouded with recollection.

"Temari."

Katara smiled uncertainly at him, and after a moments hesitation, he smiled back.

"How does Temari go about subduing her little brothers? Or is she younger than you?"

Kankuro shook his head, slinging the scrolls over his shoulder.

"No, she's the oldest. And if she wants me to shut up, she beats me up with her fan. It's very...bloody, ja. If she wants Gaara to shut up, she just asks him to." He sighed theatrically, then jumped into the trees, landing lightly on a low branch. "Just another negative aspect of being the middle child."

Sokka was still suspicious, but the thought of another frightening girl with fans brought a smile to his face.

"I too know the pain of the psychotic, fan-wielding woman. Of course, _we_ don't share a house, but I've been beaten with one before, and..." he trailed off meaningfully, and Kankuro grinned at him, obviously sensing a kindred spirit.

"Well, probably not a fan this big, ja. Have you ever been beaten over the head with a six-foot-long iron fan?"

Sokka shook his head, dumbfounded.

"It's very painful, ja. What about _your_ girl-with-fan? What's she like?"

* * *

The process of explaining about Bloodbenders, the war with the Fire Nation, the concept of bending, and even a bare minimum of the events leading up to the makeshift party that was wandering the continent, took almost two hours, and the sun had reached it's peak when Gaara stood, pacing over to the rock and slinging the gourd over his shoulder.

"Even ignoring the fact that this to you this is common knowledge, and that we have never heard of it, we have a problem. If your map is right, which I would assume that it is, and _our_ map is still the same as last time I used it…"

Kankuro was looking uncharacteristically serious, sitting in front of the two maps on the ground, and he finished the sentence for his brother.

"…Then the entire continent has changed overnight, ja."

There was silence for several minutes, then Kankuro looked up at the benders, dragging his fingers through his already untidy hair.

"We need to find Temari. Can you take us to meet the people who fight with fans?"

* * *

**Kammari: Thank you! I hope it's interesting enough that you want to keep reading.**

**Gozen V: I'm glad that you think it's intriguing. I'm hoping to be deviant about this fanfiction. The boy with silver eyes arrived with a person who is related to him. He has long dark hair, and in Shippuden he has a man-skirt. Can you guess now? XD**

**dogbrother4: I started this story immediately after watching what I am pretty sure was a halloween episode; 'The Puppetmaster'. That, combined with my obsession with Suna-nin, spawned this strange monstrosity. Probably the major reason that is has potential because they practically set it up for me, I'm afraid! :)**

**Next Chapter: I have no idea. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.) Crits? Reveiws? Anything welcome, except possibly flames, which I will laugh over with my siblings.**

**CuriousVortex out.**


	3. Chapter 2: Truce

**No, I am not dead, despite the hopes of many! I have been in the technologically challenged home of my grandparents who live six hours of drive-time away. That's my excuse, so _please_ don't kill me? XD**

**In this chapter, there is yet another argument, and two characters form a temporary truce. A new character shoves his way into the story, and immediately starts hinting at KankuKata. _Bad_ character! While I'm on that subject, what ships would you who read like to see? I've got a few ideas, but most of them aren't set. I don't do yaoi, or yuri, and Shikamaru, Naruto, Sokka, and Kiba are already set up. So. Just list them off as you see it, and I'll tell you whether or not I can work it in!**

* * *

Chapter 2: Truce

By the time they had all packed back up and headed back to the bender's camp, tentative webs of alliances were already forming. For example; Toph liked Kankuro because their senses of humor were very similar. Kankuro identified with Sokka, because he knew a fearsome sister when he saw one. Sokka was suspicious, but warming slowly to the new arrivals, but Katara was still holding a grudge against Kankuro, who thought she was annoying. Aang thought they were awesome and had a million questions for both of them, but didn't want to upset Katara by appearing to be too talkative, because _he_ didn't know that Katara was intrigued by Gaara, who wasn't talking much to anyone except Kankuro, and who was watching Toph train with an interested expression on his face.

Nobody was quite sure what they were doing next, and they had eventually formed small groups, talking quietly. Well, most of them were talking quietly.

"We are _not_ taking time out of this mission just to escort two lost beggars to an island that's twenty miles out of our way!"

"Then why are you refusing to even give us a _map_, ja?! Besides, I'm more important in my own country than you could ever be, so where do you get off calling _us_ 'beggars'? Did I _ask_ for you to take me back to your camp? Did we _ask_ for food?!"

"_We_ need the map! What's that supposed to mean, that you think you're more important than me?"

"Yeah, I know so, ja!"

Katara, who had been growing more and more icily calm as the fight progressed, finally snapped. "If you two don't shut up in the next ten seconds, you're going to spend the rest of the day buried in ice!"

Kankuro, still in the mood for a fight, rounded on her, furious at this interruption.

"I don't have to do what you say, ja! There aren't many people in the world who can tell me what to do, and _you _aren't one of them!"

Katara stood, and the sheer angerthat was radiating off her nearly made up for the fact that she was almost six inches shorter than the boy she was facing down.

"Then maybe we should go and find your sister! Maybe _she_ can penetrate your thick skull! And if she can't, I'd be happy to help!!"

"Then you'll have to help us find her first, _girl_, because we don't know what we're doing!"

"Oh, I'll help you find her! And when she gives you that thrashing you were talking about, I want to be watching!"

Gaara turned from Toph, who had stopped training to watch with interest as the shouting match escalated in pitch. Kankuro and Katara were nose-to-nose, and the water-bender's wild gestures were causing the rippling stream and deep pool that flowed past their camp to whip up into waves, frothing and pitching like a miniature sea.

"Or maybe you want to get away from us because you're frightened! You know that we're stronger than you!"

"Yeah?! You think I couldn't beat you one-handed? I bet even the warriors of Kyoshi could beat you, and they're all girls who can't even _bend_!! Maybe we should go and see, huh?"

"Sure, ja!"

"Do you mean to say that you _are_ going to escort us to this island, Katara-san?"

Katara, still angry, whipped around to face the boy. "Yes I will! I'll take you there myself, I swear I will, and none of _you-"_ She glared at the rest of the group as though they had had any thought of arguing, "-are going to stop me!" She stalked off into the woods, ranting to herself as she went. Gaara settled back in the grass, completely unperturbed.

"Good. I was hoping that was what you meant."

* * *

If anyone had bothered to look closely at the sleeping figures on the ground, the only thing out of the ordinary that they would have seen was that they were in two definite groups. On one side of the camp, four figures were wrapped in blankets or sleeping bags or against the side of a huge six-legged mound of fur. Every few minutes, the fur would shift and a rumbling snore would echo through the clearing, but the other sleeping forms were still and silent.

"_Katara, we don't have _time_ for this_!"

…Well, _mostly_ silent…

"_I know, Sokka! I got really angry and I just wanted to make them shut up and I-"_

"_I know what you did, Katara! What _I_ want to know is; what are you going to do _about_ it?"_

"_I can't just break my word! I promised that I would take them to Kyoshi, and that's what I'm going to do. Besides, they need to find their sister. How would you like it if we'd lost each other and you didn't know whether I was alive or dead?"_

"_That's different!"_

"_Really? Why?"_

"_It- It just-_is.

"_I wonder where they're from… How can anyone in the _world _not know what bending is?"_

"_They are _not_ of this world, Katara. Ooooooo…"_

"_Hilarious, Sokka."_

"_Fine. If we have to, we have to. Besides, if you're not coming with us, Aang isn't going to want to come either. And you're my sister."_

"_Aww, Sokka! I didn't know you cared…"_

"_Shaddap. Go to sleep."_

* * *

On the other side of the clearing, one of the two figures abruptly stirred. The other, lying on his back with his eyes open, didn't react as his brother slid silently out of the clearing. This had been arranged earlier; a discreet hand signal here, a meaningful word there, a few numbers scratched in the dirt.

_Be gone for a while. I'll be back before sunrise._

Gaara turned over again, smiling into the long grass as somewhere across the camp there was a shifting of blankets. Footsteps padded out of the camp, light and female. Not the blind girl then- she stomped around like she was permanently angry- and not the two boys. This would be their suspicious guide to the island of Kyoshi. If Kankuro was going to go off and train in the middle of the night, being spied on by girls was a problem he would have to deal with by himself.

Gaara waited until the only sound in the camp was the quite breathing of sleepers, then he rolled over again, staring at the stars. He had a lot to think over.

* * *

Katara flinched as in front of her, Kankuro stopped to listen again. He had been pausing every few minutes, staring around at the forest suspiciously, then walking only a few feet before he stopped and repeated the process. It was _maddening_. If he thought someone was following him, why didn't he go and check?

The trees thinned, and Kankuro sat down right there on the ground, turning his face to the sky. He sat there for a few seconds, breathing deeply with obvious enjoyment, then slung the scrolls off his back with a practiced motion. He opened two of them, then reached a hand up to his mouth, biting through the skin of his thumb unflinchingly. Katara felt just slightly ill as he lowered his hand, watching the blood well up for a second. Then he drew two sweeping lines of blood across the white paper and delicate spiraling symbols.

The scrolls vanished in an explosion of smoke, replace by two dark… shapes. Katara didn't know what they were. They were completely still, the size and approximate shape of a human collapsed on the ground.

The thick haze the scrolls had apparently released dissipated quickly, and the boy lifted one hand in front of the other, sinking into a half-familiar stance with his fingers spread wide, glowing with pools and threads of blue light. The threads whipped out, fastening themselves to the figures on the ground, and they rose into the air with a noise of clattering wood. It was the only sound in the clearing apart from the wind in the trees and her own thudding heartbeat, which was so loud she was sure it was echoing across the clearing. She closed her eyes and ran over Waterbending forms in her head, then opened them again, marginally calmer. She was a master Waterbender. She could take anything this boy could bring on.

Kankuro stood in one long, smooth movement, a shadow against the waningmoon. The light from strange glow wreathing his hands played on his features and stretched his feral grin over his face till it looked inhuman. Katara shuddered, backing away unintentionally, but the moment of wicked elation passed quickly.

Kankuro took a deep breath, then started to move; slowly at first, then gaining speed, in what was obviously a pre-formed pattern. The strange wooden bodies moved with him, and occasionally one would vanish, only to morph from the shadows on the opposite side of the clearing. It was weird, unnatural, and strangely fascinating, the oddity of the scene highlighted by the sharp criss-crossing pattern of black and white shadows that the moonlight sent sliding across the ground.

Toph, the instant cynic, probably would have made fun of the boy for sneaking out of camp to 'dance in the moonlight', but to Katara- who could recognize a move here and there- thinking of the boy as just another Waterbender was strangely encouraging.

She gathered that courage, took a deep, calming breath, and stepped out into the clearing, coughing quietly to make her presence known. Instantly, it was over; there was a clatter of wood as Kankuro dropped the blue threads and spun round, glaring at her like he wanted nothing more than to _strangle_ her right then and there.

"What do you think you're _doing_?! Idiot girl!"

Katara remembered, at that moment, exactly _why _she didn't like the boy.

"What, did I interrupt your _dance_ practice?" She raised her eyebrows, exaggerating her disbelief on purpose. As predicted, his face turned ever-so-slightly pink, and he drew himself up, almost half a foot taller than her.

"One! _It is not. Dancing._ Two, what are you doing following me out here in the middle of the night, ja? Three, you shouldn't interrupt me while I'm training! Do you know how easily I could have _skewered_ you?"

Katara smirked. She'd only known him for a day, and she already knew at least one way to make him angry. This boy wouldn't last long in their group if he couldn't control his anger.

"Skewer me with what? I see no weapons."

Kankuro flicked a hand, and suddenly there was a razor-sharp blade inches from her eyes, dripping with something dark purple and chemical. Katara flinched away from the wooden hand and the dripping knife, and another carved face loomed up behind her, its three round, glassy eyes rolling eerily in their sockets. Kankuro laughed softly, and the two… _things_ retreated, standing at his shoulders like macabre bodyguards.

"Karasu. Kuroari." He said the words with a kind of reverence, like he was naming something precious, to be spoken of only with tremendous respect. "I haven't been strong enough, ja. I still don't have enough control back to use all three..." His eyes sharpened, as though he had only just remembered to be angry. "-But I'm still plenty strong enough with two puppets to impale a little girl who doesn't know better than to interrupt me while I'm training!"

Katara bridled at this mention of herself as a 'little girl', and opened her mouth to argue, but the boy waved her away with an air of easy authority, turning towards the crumpled figures of his puppets.

"Don't waste my time, _brat_. I'd offer to fight you, but then there'd be no one to take us to find Temari, ja."

"Oh, really! How did you manage to 'lose' your sister?! Did you lose your mother the same way? I bet when _you_ say lose, it means you left them behind! Is that why you're wandering around out here, stealing from people and leeching off us? I bet you're just some spoiled brat who ran away from home, and your mother-"

"My mother is _dead_!!"

There was a ringing silence, and Kankuro's face stilled from wild fury into an icy calm.

"I'll find my sister on my own, ja. The first thing I remember in this place is waking up face-down in the dirt and I don't know where I am, but traveling alone is obviously the only way to make this work. I'm going back to get my things, and I'll be out of your way by morning."

He smiled coldly at her, turning to pick up his puppets and their scrolls. He twisted his hands together in a blur, the uncertain moonlight distorting the motion even more. The puppets vanished in another cloud of thick smoke.

"That's what you wanted, right? We'll just run back to our _mother_, shall we? Or possibly our father? The one who sealed a demon inside Gaara and murdered mom? Oh, I _forgot_. He's dead as well…"

He turned around and finally noticed Katara staring at him.

"What? Feel sorry for me or something, ja? Now that you know I'm an orphan?" He sneered, sinking into the crouch he had used to spring into the trees earlier that morning.

"Wait!" Katara took a few seconds to comprehend that the word had come from her own mouth, and it was only after the puppeteer turned to fix her with a withering glare she realized that she didn't know what she wanted to say.

"I- I'm sorry. I didn't- I mean-"

"If you've got something to say, girl, say it already! I need to leave."

Katara didn't reply for a second, marshaling her thoughts with difficulty in the face of the boy's constant sullen glare.

"I lost my mom too." She swallowed hard. "I apologize for what I said about your mother. I was wrong. And…" She held out a hand tentatively. "I think you two really _need_ a guide." Katara smiled sheepishly. "Can we call a temporary truce?"

Kankuro watched her coolly for a full ten seconds, a calculating look in his eyes, then he folded his hands in front of his chest and gave her a small bow.

"Fine then, ja. Truce." He straightened up, looking at her expectantly. Katara stared back for a second, then realization hit her, and she hastily returned a clumsy bow of her own, deliberately bowing lower.

"Truce."

Kankuro's expression was slightly softer as she straightened up. He obviously hadn't missed the sign of respect and the atmosphere warmed a little as they smiled warily at each other.

"Now let's get back to the camp before your friends notice we're missing. They might draw unsavory conclusions, ja."

"But remember, they still think that _I_ think that you're a stuck-up jerk! And I do, actually. And while I'm thinking about it, just because we aren't fighting anymore doesn't mean that I can't do _this_..." There was the sound of a slap, and Kankuro sighed somewhere in the trees. "What was that for? I didn't do anything to- well okay, I _did_ insult you and yell at you…"

The teasing voices faded into the darkness. And somewhere in the forest a boy woke up and listened to the voices of his inner demons.

* * *

The second otherworldly incidence happened after lunch a day and a half later, after Katara, Aang, and Toph's training session had turned into an all-out mud/water fight. Kankuro was lounging on the bank, alternately dozing and watching with vague amusement as clumps of mud and splashes of water drenched the trees around him. He had declined the invitation to join in, his only excuse that 'these are the only pair of clothes I've got, ja'.

Gaara sat on the bank, closely observing Toph as she shot mud balls with great accuracy. It was still a fascination of his- even after their explanations of bending and that they didn't _know _what hand-seals were- watching the blind Earthbender work. After several minutes of splashing and laughing, the redhead stood, pulling his gourd on over his shoulder.

"I am going for a walk. Please be prepared to leave before I get back. If I am not back before lunch, I have met someone… unexpected."

He gave his brother a meaningful look, and Kankuro sat up marginally straighter, giving him a serious nod. He immediately spoiled the effect by yawning cavernously, and he probably would have slumped back and gone to sleep again if Katara hadn't chosen that moment to send a stream of purposely half-frozen water crawling down the back of his shirt. Kankuro yelped and sat up straight again, suddenly wide awake, and the girl smirked, pulling the water away and back into the stream.

Kankuro pulled away from the now-wet ground he had been lying on, then felt his back and shot Katara an accusatory look. The girl looked innocently at the sky, smiling angelically; the perfect little Waterbender.

Kankuro got up reluctantly and was trudging towards a patch of bright sunlight on the ground (presumably to lie in the sun till the huge wet patch on his back was dry) when a handful of mud whacked into the back of his head, all but knocking him over.

The puppeteer stood perfectly still for several seconds, then he wrenched his shirt over his head, took a running jump, and landed in the neck-deep water with a tremendous _splash_, drenching Katara and Aang. Sokka burst out laughing, and a vengeful and well-aimed bolt of air sent his freshly-inked map flying into his face, leaving a perfect imprint of the four bending nations.

Kankuro surfaced, gulping air, only to be met with a stream of water falling out of the sky like an upside-down fountain. Katara smirked at him, then flicked her hands deliberately, and the puppeteer barely had time to register the threatbefore he was flattened against the bank of the stream with enough force to crack bones.

Katara lowered her hands, dropping what was- in effect- a small tidal wave, then ducked just in time to avoid a mud-ball from Toph, who was standing on a low bank full of sandy muck. Toph in turn had to dive to one side to avoid the tendrils of mud that Aang was twining around her legs, and she almost fell in the water, clutching at the bank.

In the lull as everyone got their balance, the sound of the voice that echoed faintly through the trees was clearly audible.

"Hey you! Who's there, and what do you-?" Then a wordless shout, then silence.

Kankuro, disoriented, hauled himself out of the water, tried to scramble his way up the muddy bank, and fell over, laughing croakily and coughing red-tinged water onto the ground. Katara pulled herself up beside him, her face concerned, and tried to help him up. He stayed on the ground, laughing and gasping for air to form words.

"That…kid... doing…here…hah! The annoying little…" He broke off, then pushed himself into a sitting position, holding his side with one hand.

Katara hadn't noticed it when they had all been underwater, but unlike Aang (who was still trading mud balls with Toph), the boy wasn't completely shirtless. His chest was tightly wrapped in a mess of bandages, which were dirty, stained, and a familiar shade of faded blue. Kankuro had stopped laughing, and he took his hand away from his chest, looking with obvious annoyance at the coat of bloody water that dripped off his fingers.

"And here I was, thinking it had _closed_ again. What I wouldn't give for a medic-nin, ja."

He turned to Katara, absentmindedly wiping his bloody hand on the grass beside him.

"You guys get injured sometimes, right? Have you got bandages?"

Katara nodded, watching in something like fascination as more blood seeped through the makeshift bandage. Kankuro waited for a few seconds, then despaired of getting an answer and started climbing the bank again.

"Stop!" He froze, staring straight ahead, and a pair of small- but surprisingly strong- hands grabbed him and pulled him back down.

"You're not going _anywhere_ until I get a look at that, and there's no use in arguing, so lie still. Understand?"

Something in that tone of voice obviously spoke to Kankuro, and he lay down without complaint.

"Good. Now, what am I dealing with here?" Katara worked her fingers under the knot of the bandages, tugging until the wet cloth gave up the fight. The boy flinched slightly as Katara's fingers brushed the bloody cloth, but he stayed still, staring up at the sky.

"Just an injury from a fight a few… days ago. Maybe a week, ja." Katara put aside the cloth in a pile, then pulled gently on the last piece, which was stiff with dried blood. It wouldn't come off.

"This is dried on. I can get it off, but it'll take a while to- _hey_!" Kankuro pulled her hand away, grabbed the corner of the last piece of bandage, and yanked. The cloth came away with a nasty ripping noise and a strong smell of old blood. Kankuro bit his lip- the hand that was still holding Katara's wrist tightening painfully- then he relaxed and opened his eyes, grinning at the girl as he lay back again.

"No time to do this slowly, ja. If you're a medic-nin, heal it and get it over with already, if you're not, do it anyway. There's someone I have to go meet."

Katara pulled a strand of water from the pool and wiped away the trickles of blood that were already dripping onto the ground from the half-healed gash, turning the mud a dirty reddish-brown. Aang turned from Toph to send Katara another of his unreasonably powerful water attacks, and finally noticed that she was no longer participating.

"Katara? What's wrong?" He saw the figure on the ground in front of her, and his eyes widened in shock.

"Can I do anything?" Katara gestured vaguely up the bank with one hand, examining the red, swollen skin closely.

"Bandages please, Aang. In my pack."

The boy took off up the bank, draining water out of the mud until he was climbing a solid dirt slope, and Katara turned professionally back to the task at hand, pushing her hair absentmindedly out of her eyes with bloody fingertips.

The injury was wide and shallow, dangerously close to the heart and bleeding freely into the mud of the bank. Katara shrouded her hands in water, then lowered them gingerly to the wound, doing her best to ignore Aang's anxious questions as a roll of bandages dropped onto the ground beside her.

Kankuro shivered as her fingers touched his skin, and Katara noticed pulled away anxiously.

"Are you okay? This shouldn't hurt too much if I'm doing it right."

The boy smiled at the sky, closing his eyes again as the waving branches flashed sunlight in his face.

"I'm fine, ja. If you can heal it fast, it doesn't matter what it feels like. I'm a ninja, I've had training."

Katara frowned dubiously down at her patient with a motherly eye, noting his ragged breathing. She pressed an experimental hand gently to the discolored skin around the gash, and he flinched at the contact. She sat back again with a sigh, shaking her head stubbornly.

"If I hurt you while I'm supposed to be healing you, that's defeating the purpose, and I'm not going to rush this- _No you don't_! Lie back down until I'm done, or I'll have Toph knock you out so that I can do my job properly!"

Katara grabbed the boy by the shoulders and slammed him back onto the ground, lowering her head till they were face-to-face.

"_Stay_. _Still_."

"Katara-san?"

"Who stays here? Oy, Gaara, do you know them?!"

A new voice echoed around the clearing, obnoxiously loud, and a back-lit head poked over the high bank, surrounded by a halo of spiky blonde hair.

"Hey, _Kankuro_… Whatcha _doin'_, huh?" The voice made it very clear that the boy knew _exactly_ what he was doing, and there was a note of mocking glee hidden in it that boded very ill for the puppeteer if he ever got out of this alive. Kankuro groaned and shut his eyes, resigned to his fate.

"That," said Gaara's perfectly calm voice, "is a very good question. What _are_ you doing, nii-san?"

"_Nothing_, ja!"

"You've got a _girlfriend_? Jeez, took you long enough, I thought you-"

"Naruto?"

"What?"

"Shut up. Go away."

"Why? Need some 'alone time' with your first g-" There was the sound of footsteps, and Naruto's protesting voice got progressively fainter, though still abhorrently loud.

"Gaara! Let go! _Gaara_! Just because _you_ have sand and-"

Katara turned back to Kankuro, raising her eyebrows skeptically.

"What, you've never had a girlfriend?"

She had thought that the only expressions the boy was capable of were 'sullen', 'tired', 'angry', and 'blank'. She had never seen him look embarrassed. He stared in the opposite direction, maintaining a pointed silence, and she smiled smugly at him, deliberately letting her hand brush his arm.

He shivered again and pulled his arm away, and her evil grin grew wider.

"You know you're blushing, right?" She looked up as the voice of Sokka was raised in protest somewhere in the camp above, (…_can't just bring random runaways into our camp and_…) then turned back at the still-bleeding gash, pulling more water out of the river.

"Fine then. Let's finish up here so that we can explain things to your blonde-haired friend up there, hm?"

Kankuro avoided looking her in the eyes, opting instead to stare at a patch of moss a few inches from his face.

"Hn."

"I'm glad you agree."

* * *

A few minutes later, introductions were being made. In what was almost certainly a planned maneuver, the only way there was room for Kankuro and Katara to sit was next to each other. Gaara nodded gravely to the gathered boys and girls, then ushered the newcomer into the circle.

"For those of you who don't know him-"

"_Lucky._" Muttered Kankuro quietly, squeezed as far away from Katara as possible. Gaara ignored him.

"-this is Uzumaki Naruto. He is a very good friend of mine, and I can assure you of his trustworthiness."

Sokka crossed his arms, looking the boy up and down skeptically.

"Why should we believe you?"

Katara leaned over without looking and smacked him upside the head, leaning across Kankuro to do it. The boy flinched away like her skin was white-hot, and Naruto stared at them both with a wicked smile on his face. Kankuro glared at him, but the only reaction he got out of the younger boy was a mischievous smile and a suggestive wiggling of eyebrows.

After several seconds of awkward silence, in which Naruto's gaze flickered incessantly between the two of them, Kankuro stood stiffly, grabbed Naruto by the arm with a determined look on his face and dragged him out of the camp. Before they were even out of eyeshot the puppeteer was whispering angrily, obviously gearing up for a full-scale rant, and Naruto was walking in a strangely hunched-over fashion; his shoulders shaking with barely restrained laughter.

Katara looked at Gaara, pinching the bridge of her nose tiredly.

"Let me guess. 'Katara-san, please escort my companion as well as myself to the island.' right?"

Gaara, rarely enough, looked slightly amused, sitting perfectly poised on his fallen tree trunk; He had his hands folded in front of him, and he was studying her with an expression of interest.

"You are a very intelligent girl. In fact, you remind me of our sister."

His mouth quirked up at the corners as Katara made a self-conscious waving motion, as though to discredit the compliment.

"This is most likely why my older brother is so fond of you."

Katara laughed, hauling the scattered packs of her fellow travelers off the ground and dragging them into a neat pile by the remains of their small fire. Momo launched himself out of the way, them landed on top of the heap, chittering angrily at Katara for disturbing his resting place.

"_That's_ his way of showing fondness? How do you live with it every day?"

Sokka scraped a sharpening stone idly down the blade of his sword, angling it so that the noon sunlight glinted blindingly. The sound of metal on stone was the only thing that disturbed the silence for several seconds, then Gaara sighed deeply.

"Our family works differently from yours. We are only just getting to know each other even now, and showing affection is a bit of a dilemma. Up until a few years ago, I had a mental… condition, which made me- to be honest- homicidal."

He rubbed two fingers over the scar on his forehead, then dropped his hand away self-consciously, forming twisted miniature sand sculptures in the palm of his hand. A raccoon, a tiny boy crouched on the ground, and a hulking creature, a gruesome fusion of beast and human.

"It makes ashamed to remember, but if anyone- even my own brother and sister- got in the way, I would threaten them with death. If they didn't back down- if they didn't appease me, I _would_ kill them."

He crushed the sculpture, letting a few grains of sand trickle through his clenched fingers, then stood decisively.

"How soon can we leave for Kyoshi Island?"

Katara, taken aback by the sudden change of subject, instinctively turned to Sokka, who looked up from his weapon quizzically.

"What? How soon can we leave? Well if you have to go, you'd better go as soon as possible." He sheathed the sword reluctantly, admiring it's glassy sheen one more time, then dug through Aang's pack until he found the well-worn bison whistle.

Katara turned to Toph, and wordlessly gestured towards the forest. The Earthbender walked away, grumbling under her breath, and came back only minutes later with the two boys in tow. They were clearly ignoring each other, avoiding walking any closer than they had to, but as soon as Katara came into view Naruto snapped off something inaudible- a parting shot, probably- and dived out of the way of Kankuro's half-hearted smack.

"Hey guys! I just realized- _holy crap_!"

Naruto barely had time to dive out of the way before Appa landed thunderously, taking up half the tiny clearing with his shaggy bulk. The blonde rolled and jumped up again, sending a handful of throwing knives at the bison in one smooth movement. Katara shrieked, reaching for water to form a shield, but the kunai never hit. Gaara lowered his sand wall slowly, throwing knives clattering to the ground as Kankuro lifted the blonde firmly off the ground from behind, using his superior height to his advantage.

"Get _off_ me you idiot, there's a monster right there-!"

"Everybody stop talking!"

Toph stood; quietly seething, until the noise completely vanished, then she uncrossed her arms, striding over to Naruto. In spite of the fact that she was several feet shorter that him, he seemed to shrink away slightly as she approached.

"Listen, kid. This is Appa. He is our flying bison. You are not to kill him, and you will not try! _Understand_?!"

Naruto nodded quickly, practically standing to attention as Toph smiled with deceptive calm.

"Good. I'm glad we've sorted that out. Now, I hate to say this, because it means another day of feeling queasy, but…" She took a deep breath, the reluctantly let it out. "Hop on board everyone. Let's get flying."

Naruto, now knowing that this strange new creature wasn't a threat, paused in his examination of Appa's third set of legs.

"Awesome! Where are we going?"

* * *

**...To Mordor, Naruto... (Dundunduuuuh).**

**pinkchocolate28m: They got to the Avatar world... Uhhh... Because I said so! Yeah. I don't know, actually. It was all quantum and stuff. :)**

**socksophrenia: Thank you! I am honored to have such a complimentary review! (nice name, by the way XD) On the subject of Kankuro's 'ja'; you are correct, it _is_ only in the anime. I think that it must have been in the manga in the original Japanese, but they couldn't translate it properly. If you go to the episode where the Suna-nin turn up (the end of ep. 20) and listen for it, he does tack the syllable 'ja' onto the end of most sentences. On the subject of hair; I honestly hadn't thought of that, but now that I look back on it, I am ashamed. Forgive, oh _forgive_! **

**Kammari: Unfortunately, I had already planned (sort of) the manner of Naruto's arrival, and the presence of someone he knows (i.e. Gaara) has calmed any extreme paranoia that he might have. Thanks for reviewing!**

**Gozen V: You're welcome! I'm glad it's up to scratch. your list of characters is mostly correct, but Shino hasn't come on this particular journey. Why? As I was forced to reply to pinkchocolate28m; 'because I said so'. Also, it might just be the computer screen I watch on, or maybe you watch dubbed Naruto (they brighten the colors. I don't watch it dubbed, but it's possible that Gaara's eyes look blue). But you're really good if you managed to guess all but one right from just my cryptic hints! XD**

**Again, I'm open for ship suggestions, although it's not _guaranteed_ that I will include them.**

**Toodles ;P, CuriousVortex.**


	4. Chapter 3: What Took You So Long?

**I have neglected my duties!! Aaaaagh! I havn't written much at all, but it has taken me almost a week! Aaaaaagh!**

**Sorry? Hahahahahah... **

* * *

Chapter 3: What Took You So Long?

Considering the reaction all three outsiders had had to Appa, they got used to flying surprisingly fast. Gaara was sitting cross-legged on the sky-bison's huge neck, his eyes shut as though he was meditating, ignoring the questions that came every few seconds from whichever corner Naruto happened to be sitting in. The blonde was a ball of nervous energy, moving near-constantly from place to place, dropping randomly into conversations and Sokka's attempt at an impromptu planning session.

The only minor excitement came when Kankuro apparently decided he was bored, and summoned one of his puppets to tinker with -completely without warning- his reasoning being; 'I need something to _do_, ja, or I get violent.'

Toph inched over to him, keeping a firm grip on Appa's fur as though afraid she would go flying off. She hadn't liked it when they had had a saddle for the bison, and she like flying even less since they had abandoned it for speed's sake.

"What was everyone yelling about? I can't see _anything_ up here."

She reached an arm out, groping for his hands, then ran her hands over the wood of the puppet's head. Her fingers lingered on the three eyes and sharp, jagged teeth, then scooted away, raising one eyebrow skeptically.

"You've been keeping this… where? Why haven't I noticed that you were carrying a weird, full-sized doll?"

Kankuro jerked it away, rolling his eyes. It was obvious that this was an old grievance of his, just like when Katara had made fun of him 'dancing'.

"He's not a doll, ja! He's a-" But Gaara interrupted his brother, not opening his eyes where he sat. "-battle puppet. And it's fully stocked with every weapon he can cram, too, so I wouldn't touch incautiously it if I were you."

Toph edged around the puppet that lay on Kankuro's lap, then grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled him down to her level- ignoring the blade that nearly took her foot off.

"Stop whining and sit still. I want to know what you look like."

Kankuro relaxed slightly, looking back down at his greasy hands with an expression of mock severity. He had his sleeves rolled up to the shoulder, enjoying the sunlight, and his hands were still buried in the dismantled torso of his puppet, holding a complicated mess of wires and tiny smoked-glass vials.

"Just don't interfere with my line of sight, and that's fine. This is a delicate business, ja."

"I don't care if you think its fine, I'm doing it anyway." Toph ran her fingers over his face, frowning with concentration. "Hn."

Kankuro didn't look up, grabbing a wire off his hand with his teeth to free a finger, and fishing a buried pack of needles out of the depths of the wooden chest.

"Got it! What's that supposed to mean; 'hn'?" He let go of all the wires simultaneously; they snapped immediately back to their original position.

"Nothing much… It's just that… You have a really big nose, you know that?"

Kankuro gave a defeated sigh, brushing his hair out of his eyes with an oily hand and leaving black streaks on his forehead. His hair fell right back over his eyes as he picked up the wooden plate that he had removed from the puppet's chest, fiddling several tiny bolts into position.

"Yes, I am aware of my nose problem. People inform me of this on occasion. When they aren't bowing and cringing and hoping I'll go away, of course." He laughed shortly, closely examining the hairline crack where the two pieces of wood met.

"He's done, ja. These need a new… _crap_! I don't have any extra measures of poison!"

He turned to Katara, holding up one of the small clear vials. The only remains of whatever substance used to be inside it was the purple-grey stains on the very bottom, and when Kankuro untwisted the lid and turned it upside-down, a few grains of crystallized liquid.

"I don't suppose you have this _specific_ kind of poison lying around? I need this stuff for assassination missions, ja. I don't care how illegal it is, it really gets the job done. No?"

The expression on Katara's face rendered words unnecessary. The boy turned back to his puppet, shaking the vial one or two more times as though hoping illegal poison for assassinating people would magically appear.

"It doesn't really matter anyway, Kankuro," said Gaara, not breaking his expression of effortless poise, "-since as the Kazekage, I've banned you from mission higher that C-rank until I deem you to be ready for active duty." He cracked an eyelid, wincing as the sunlight struck his eyes. "-You are still recovering from a near-fatality, remember? I am sure if Sakura-san was still here, she would say the same thing."

Kankuro shot his brother a glare, but there was no real fire behind it. You couldn't really argue with Gaara; he refused to argue back.

"I'm _more_ than fit for B-rank missions, ja. Maybe I'm not ready for the solo tomorrow, but with a team to back me up-"

"No, Kankuro."

"But if I-"

"No, Kankuro."

"Hey-"

"No."

Naruto snickered, not looking up from the map he had stolen from Sokka.

"Kazekage- Gaara, Kankuro- Jounin! Can't beat that. Hey look, it's your desert!"

Gaara finally stood, hurrying over to where the boy was standing, pointing into the distance. On the edge of the horizon there was a sweep of golden sand, swirling in the wind and sending them the faintest hint of a warm breeze.

Gaara was staring at the sand, looking more relaxed than any of them had ever seen him, and Kankuro gave a longing sigh.

"If there's anywhere in this place we belong, it's there, ja."

Gaara nodded silently, his eyes fixed on the distant desert. There was stillness for a few seconds, even from Naruto, then Gaara looked away with a sigh.

"But at this moment, that's not where we're heading. Family is the first priority."

Kankuro seemed reluctant to even look away from the line of gold in the distance, but at the mention of family he tore his gaze away; staring instead at the miles of undulating forest that stretched to the sea.

"Yeah, ja. Hey, map boy!"

Sokka didn't answer, but_ pointedly _so. Kankuro rolled his eyes in exasperation.

"Fine… _Sokka_, then. How long will this trip take us?"

Sokka didn't answer, still sulking over his demotion to 'map boy', but Aang had been sitting quietly for too long, and was plenty eager to talk.

"Right up there is the sea, then it's only about half an hour of flying! You'll like Kyoshi, it's got this _huge_ eel called the Unagi, and great food, and Sokka's friend Suki is awesome! She's been training Sokka, but he has to wear a dress and makeup, and-"

Sokka clamped a hand over the Airbender's mouth, cutting off what probably would have been an extremely humiliating story. It was too late.

"A _dress_, huh? Cross-dressing, map boy?" but the boy turned sternly to the Avatar, shaking his head like a parent explaining something to a child.

"It's not makeup though, ja. Anything that a warrior- even a cross-dressing one- puts on before battle is war-paint, okay? People always get that wrong."

Sokka took his hand away, looking slightly pacified, and Aang continued as though nothing had happened.

"-and girls! I could introduce you to some of them, if you like."

Kankuro shook his head just slightly too fast.

"No thanks. I'm _not_ in the market for a girlfriend."

"Yeah, 'cause you've already _got _a girlfriend!"

Kankuro sent Naruto a rude hand-gesture, and then finally noticed the state of his hands, wiping them on his already filthy black shirt.

Katara's laugh was muffled, because she'd had the foresight to bury her face in her knees, but it was still enough to get her a venomous glare from the puppeteer. The look clearly said; 'this is all_ your_ fault!', and Katara smirked back- completely unfazed- and gave a tiny wave and a wink. _Yes, it is._

A different rude gesture, this time directed at her, but only to hide his embarrassment. That was the fun thing about talking to Kankuro, even if no words were exchanged. Gaara was completely implacable, but Katara could read his older brother like an open book.

Kankuro had turned away again, watching the desert fade into the grey haze of the horizon with a strange, hungry expression on his face, and for a second he looked years older; far more tired than a sixteen-year-old should look.

There was one last gust of warm air from the rolling sand, then Appa dipped towards the trees and it was gone.

In front of them, to the East, the ocean drew steadily closer; this time bringing cool air their way as they sunk slowly to glide over the treetops. Sokka, despite his protests at first, got more and more cheerful as they got closer to the island, although he wouldn't answer when Aang innocently asked why he was humming.

A couple of hours after the desert had vanished from sight, Toph sat up straight, sniffing the air and turning her head this way and that.

"I hear the sea!"

Every other member of the group rushed to look down as the sand of the beach melted smoothly into rolling breakers, then into foaming sea-water. Aang cheered, standing fearlessly on Appa's head for a better view of the tiny shadow of the island in the distance.

"We'll get there before dinnertime! Oh yeah!"

The bison grumbled loudly, picking up the speed at the mention of dinner, and Momo jumped onto Aang's head, chittering excitedly.

Katara turned to Kankuro, who was absentmindedly staring into the distance, and gave him a once-over. Almost instantly, his gaze snapped back to her, and expression of guarded curiosity in his eyes.

Katara cautiously got up, swaying with the motion as Appa changed direction slightly, and walked around behind the boy. He spun around, trying to keep his eyes on her, but she grabbed his shoulders, examining the back of his threadbare shirt with distaste.

"What're _you_ staring at, girl?"

"If you are talking to me-"

"Of course I am, ja!"

"-then my name is Katara. If you want an answer, you'd better use it."

Kankuro's expression spoke for him, and what it was saying to her was mostly obscene.

"…_Fine._" His face became one of diplomatic interest, with murder in his eyes as he asked with polite concern. "Why were you examining my attire, Katara-san? I see no obvious issue with my appearance."

Toph burst out laughing, as did Sokka, and Gaara smiled at Kankuro, who looked humiliated and angry, falling back into his normal slouch.

"nii-san, where did you learn to do that? We never let you out for parties specifically because I thought you _didn't_ know diplomacy."

"That's because it's _stupid_, ja. I watch you when you're greeting those foul, idiotic feudal lords."

Kankuro turned back to the issue at hand, waiting patiently for Katara to stop laughing.

"Well? You didn't answer the question, ja. Why were you staring at me?"

"You need new clothes. Those are- quite frankly- a disgrace."

Gaara looked down at his threadbare blue and white robe, his mouth quirking into a wry smile.

"She has a point, Kankuro. _I_ wouldn't take us in on hospitality." He wrinkled his nose at his brother's bloodstained clothes. "Especially not you, in fact."

Naruto, who was sitting on the bison's tail, gave a yell and scrambled back from the edge, his eyes wide with shock.

"What was that thing?!"

Aang scrambled over onto Appa's tail, looking down at the deep water skimming by below them.

"What?" His question was promptly answered as a _huge_ fish breached the waves, barely missing the sky-bison and his passengers.

"Oh, them? Those are the elephant koi. They're really fun to ride!"

Naruto stared down at the huge fish in fascination, his expression one of childlike joy.

"What do they _eat_? They're huge!"

Aang scratched at the tattooed arrow on his forehead with an expression of contemplation.

"Y'know what? I have no idea. I've only ever seen them get eaten."

"Let's throw Kankuro off and see if they eat people! Can you swim, Kankuro?"

Kankuro stared at him like this was the stupidest thing he had ever heard.

"Can I swim?' I live in a desert, why would I know how to _swim_?"

"You can't? Cool! Because _I_ can! I know something you don't, I know something-"

Katara slapped a hand over Kankuro's mouth as he opened it, sensing a swearword in the making, and smiled demurely at Aang.

"Excuse us for a second?"

She dragged Kankuro over to the Appa's neck, where Gaara politely stood and walked over to sit by Toph.

"When I take my hand away, you are not going to say whatever swearword you are thinking, correct?" It was more a statement than a question. Kankuro glowered at her and tried to shake her hand off, but Katara held on, grabbing him by the front of his shirt and pulling him towards her until they were nose-to-nose.

"You and I both know that if I kiss you right here and now, your little blonde friend will _never_, and I mean that literally, _never _let you forget about it. I can only imagine. I don't want to do it, but you force my hand. If I uncover your mouth, you will _not_ start yelling obscenities."

Kankuro's eyes widened, then narrowed, staring at her accusingly. Finally, he grudgingly nodded his head.

Katara took her hand away, smiling sweetly at him.

"Smart boy. Now-"

"I hope you realize," interrupted Kankuro irately, "next time you do that I'm going to either risk the humiliation or _bite_ you. Probably the second one, because the _last_ thing I want is to kiss you."

"Really? Like, 'with my last breath' sort of thing? Aww, that's _so_ cute!"

Kankuro growled under his breath, muttering something obscene, then flinched as Katara leaned towards him, grinning triumphantly.

His eyes darted over her shoulder, where she knew the rest of the group was sitting and wondering what they were talking about, and his expression changed suddenly to a rather worrying grin.

"But something occurs to me, ja. If you kiss me, I get ragged by Naruto for the rest of my life, it's true. But if you kiss me, what's your _brother_ going to say? That idiot _is_ obnoxious, but he and I live in different villages, but you and your brother probably live in the same house, right? And Toph, and the arrow kid? So I say you're bluffing."

Katara quite honestly hadn't thought of that, and she was still trying to think of a comeback when Kankuro got up and walked away, climbing cautiously onto Appa's head to sit with Aang. As soon as the Airbender noticed he had company, he promptly and enthusiastically started explaining to the older boy about Kyoshi Island's elephant koi, food, way of life, and namesake. And of course, the girls that fought with fans.

Kankuro seemed to think that it was stupid to have two 'tiny' fans, instead of the one huge fan that Temari fought with, and didn't care how many times Aang assured them that they were _perfectly_ affective.

"I mean, seriously, ja! They're too small for wind techniques when they're open, and you can't use it as a club when it's closed! Inefficient."

* * *

The sun was setting when Appa finally sank with a weary groan onto the small island cove, and it was a shaken trio of ninjas that climbed down, giving the water a wide bearing and shaking out damp clothing.

"-yeah… That was the Unagi," finished Aang, rubbing water off his face with one sleeve. "I thought it wouldn't attack us anymore. Guess I was wrong, huh?"

Gaara nodded. In contrast to the other two, he appeared to be fairly composed, despite their up-close encounter with the giant eel and his subsequent drenching.

"Well, we have arrived safely at Kyoshi Island." He shook his wet hair, awkwardly attempting to wring out his sleeves. "Well, _mostly_ safe. If rather damp. Where is the village?"

Sokka took the lead and started to walk towards the sparse forest, but there was no need. The trees rustled and five dark outlines faded out of the undergrowth, shutting their fans with a practiced hand motion and a sharp _snap_ of metal.

"Avatar! Ahh..." The leader walked forward out of the shadows, making a mocking bow to Sokka. "…pupil _Sokka_."

Sokka waved weakly, then was swept up in a bone-cracking hug.

"Nng…Hey…Suki…"

The girl dropped him, turning to the rest of the party with an inviting smile.

"Who're your new friends? I know Katara and the Avatar, of course!" She stopped in front of Gaara, Kankuro, and Toph.

"But who are you?"

"Toph Bei-fong."

"We aren't staying, ja. Have you-"

"Nonsense, Kankuro. I am Gaara of the Desert," Gaara bowed to the squad of girls, as formal as if he was in a royal banquet hall. "I am very pleased to make your acquaintance. This-" he gestured to Kankuro, who was doing his best to be inconspicuous. It had to be tough, being ordered around by your little brother.

"-I'm Kankuro, ja." Gaara gave him a pointed look, and he sighed heavily, standing slightly straighter. "Pleased to meet you."

The squad of warriors dropped their professional attitudes, mingling with the new arrivals in a clamor of female voices and high-pitched laughter, but Kankuro pulled Suki away from Aang and Sokka abruptly, ignoring the girl's faintly affronted expression.

"Have you seen a blonde-haired girl with ponytails and an aggressive attitude, ja?"

Suki gave his hand on her wrist a pointed look, drew her fan in one quick movement, rapped his knuckles sharply, then tried to jerk away. The boy winced, but didn't let go.

"I need to find her. It's _important_. Can you take us back to the town? If you fought her, she probably made fun of the size of your fans, ja. Do you know who I'm talking about?"

Suki twisted out of his grasp, her eyes wary, her fan still held ready in one hand.

"Maybe I do, maybe I don't. Why do you want to know?"

There was suddenly no expression in Kankuro's eyes, only a practiced, polished blankness. It was a disconcerting to see his expression change, like watching a mask sliding into place.

"She _is_ here."

It wasn't a question. Suki raised an eyebrow and flicked her fan open, fluttering it in front of the boy's face.

"Why do you want to know about her?"

"None of your business, ja."

"Yes it is. We are the guardians of this island. If you want to see a prisoner, we have to-"

"Prisoner."

"Yes."

They held deadpan stares for a few seconds, then the expressionless mask cracked and Kankuro's face split into a wide grin.

"Well, capturing _her_ must have been fun, but I'm here to claim her. Did you find her tessen, ja? She's going to kill me if I turn up and break her out, but she doesn't have her fan."

One of Suki's girls tapped her on the shoulder, and she turned her back on Kankuro, calling to the rest of the Avatar's crew instead.

"We _have_ to report to the village that you've arrived, Avatar! They'll need to find you a room, and of course you're welcome to join the chief for dinner…"

Kankuro and Gaara in the rear, talking quietly and intensely as the path wound upwards, the ragtag party of wanderers walked wearily up the hill, towards the glimmering lights of Kyoshi village.

* * *

It was- on the whole- a well-lit and comfortable place, this small building deputized as a prison. A diminutive man dressed in blue and white led them down a corridor offset by a few empty cells, until he reached the last on the row. Hidden in the shadows of the corner of the room, a dark shape was lying on a low bed. Gaara leaned towards the wooden slats of the door, peering into the dusty gloom as Katara reassured the man in the background. (…you can leave this to us, sir... The Avatar can deal with any threat this girl can offer…)

"Temari?"

The figure's eyes snapped abruptly open, a shade of turquoise blue that was darker than Gaara's sea-green, flickering dim in the light of the torches but familiar and piercing nonetheless.

"Gaara? Kankuro! What in the… How did you…"

The girl walked slowly towards them, wincing as her eyes adjusted to the abrupt light of the torch, then reached through the sturdy wooden bars to touch Gaara's hand.

"Took you long enough."

Temari was, as Kankuro had predicted, not at _all_ happy once the initial shock of seeing her brothers wore off. She was blonde, shorter than Kankuro, but she made up for her lack of height with sheer force of personality and- in this case- anger. Gaara, who had barely started when the giant eel in the cove had come rocketing out of the water, looked ashamed as his big sister's rant turned icy quiet. Kankuro was flinching away from her every violent hand gesture as though he somehow thought she could hit his through the door, his expression harried.

"… and what did you do to your shirt? You somehow managed to open that poisoned wound that that Akatsuki gave you, _didn't you_?!" Her younger brothers both cringed this time, and Kankuro grinned nervously, opening his mouth to reply. Temari cut him off.

"I have had enough of my brothers almost dying, the least you can do is _try_ to stay safe! Last time- ugh, you idiots!"

"Temari."

"-Heart nearly shut down, the medic said, do you have any _idea_-"

"_Temari!_"

The word rang through the room, the command of someone used to power and authority, and the girl's tirade was cut off abruptly.

"We are both fine. Katara-san," Gaara took Katara gently by the arm, gesturing her forward with and surreptitiously comforting smile. "-is a medic. She does not believe Kankuro to be in danger any more, and I see no reason to mistrust her judgment."

His sand flowed into the lock, and he closed his eyes with an expression of acute concentration. There was silence for a second, then a soft _click_ as the latch opened, letting the door swing loose.

Sokka backed away as Temari opened the door, expecting violence now that she could reach her brothers, and even Gaara looked slightly apprehensive. The girl walked slowly up to them, glared at the two of them for a second, then grabbed them and pulled them into a huge hug.

"Don't you _ever_ scare me like that again. I've had enough scares for a lifetime..."

Kankuro hugged her back, laughing into the black fabric of her dress, and Gaara put a hesitant arm around her shoulders.

Temari squeezed both of them one more time, then let go hastily, remembering that there were other people in the room.

"…Or something like that, anyway. Don't think you're not getting a whipping for this next time we train."

Kankuro sighed heavily, giving her a lazy, one-handed salute.

"Wouldn't have it any other way, ja. Did they find your fan?"

Temari walked briskly across to a closed door, slammed it open, and pulled out a six foot length of black metal, hefting it easily with one hand.

"Oh yeah."

She smiled a predatory smile, then whipped the fan open with sharp scrape of metal, sending a gust of wind down the corridors that blew the torch out and nearly bowled Aang over.

"Now, I'm going to head out into that town and-"

Kankuro grabbed her and pulled her back as she started towards the door, vengeance in her eyes.

"Temari, you can't do that, ja."

"Yeah?! Why not?"

"Because Gaara says so."

In the back ground Gaara nodded somberly, and Kankuro turned, smirking at Temari. Obviously this was the ultimate argument. Temari growled, glaring at the open doorway that led into the village, then looked back at her brothers with murder in her eyes.

"…Fine. Well then, who are they?"

"Map boy, arrow kid, Toph, and the aggravating girl, ja. Ow!"

The 'aggravating girl' lowered her fist and smiled at Temari, whose expression had become slightly less hostile.

"Katara of the water tribe. I apologize. If that _boy_-" she said the word like an accusation, glaring sideways at Kankuro, who was still rubbing his arm. "-has still got the nerve to mouth off, I obviously haven't been hitting him hard enough. I was at fault."

She gave Kankuro a bright little smile and Temari laughed, sheathing the fan in a sling over her back.

"And to think that I was worried you had gotten overconfident while I was gone, darling little brother. But I can see you've got your hands full with this girl."

"I'm Toph Bei-fong."

"I'm Aang!"

"And this is _my _annoying, lazy brother, Sokka."

Temari nodded slowly, looking from one face to another as though judging their worth.

"Right. 'Map boy', Sokka, 'arrow kid', Aang, Toph, and 'aggravating girl', Katara. The one who can keep my brother in line. Well then, pleased to meet you."

There was silence for a few moments as everyone stood in a circle, staring at each other.

"So… what are we to do now?"

Aang grinned at Gaara, obviously not intimidated at all, and slapped him on the back, effectively breaking the awkward atmosphere. Temari raised her eyebrows disbelievingly, but her brother merely swayed forward slightly with the impact, his expression not changing at all.

"Now we go and get dinner!

* * *

**Problem in the future of this fic. Sakura wants in. So she tells me (the little voice inside my head that I try to _only_ use for making sure they aren't OOC), and I'm not sure what to do about it, because I didn't mention in the prologue that Sakura came along at all. Thoughts on the matter?**

**To My Extremely Motivational Reveiwers:**

**pinkchocolate28m: Yeah, I think I'm giving up the fight on the whole 'KankuKata' thing. The only question now is: how fast do I move this forward? They're so fun to play around with, now that Katara nows she can freak him out whenever she wants to. XD Muhahahahahahahaaa...**

**Fehize: Well, what Naruto thinks of next is mostly up to Naruto, I'm afraid! :) I near-constantly feel that I have absolutely no control over the characters, and thus the KankuKata elements that keep sneaking in...**

**Kammari: Thank you! I'm sorry this didn't come out sooner, but I couldn't find any motivation for several days in a row, and inspiration is a tricky thing to recover. **

**under slayer: Before I think about NaruToph, I need to think about whether or not Toph is: A. A midget, and a lot older than she looks, or B. Way to young for the now 14-year-old Naruto. Avatar may just be TWT (Timeline, What Timeline?) or AU, and all the Avatar characters are a lot older. Probably that's the way it is, and I just don't know about it yet. XD**

**Thou hast read, so now review! Please? They make me want to finish the chapter so that I can answer your questions!**


	5. Chapter 4: Grudge Match

**She's... ALIVE!! Amazing! Fantastic! Probably poorly written to, but it's rather late over here to be choosy right at this moment, so if you see any errors, please report them. (nicely if possible. You can bawl me out, but only is I make a _really _bad mistake, okay? Thanks!) I'm thinking of changing to the scene to a different set of ninja- telling their story for a bit. Any thoughts? Which character, whether it's a good idea, etc? **

**Well, at long last...**

Chapter 4:

"Alright. So what you're telling me is something like this: this girl is named Temari. Well, that's a step forward, because she wouldn't even tell us _that_ much when we questioned her. These boys who are traveling with you are her brothers, who somehow got separated from her and have been looking for her ever since."

"Yeah, pretty much."

Suki leaned back in her chair, regarding Temari with a look that mirrored Temari's own. It said 'I'm not allowed to attack you. Yet. But I look forward to the day.'

"And where are you going next?"

Naruto put down his nearly empty bowl of ramen reluctantly- no one was sure where he'd got it, because the chief of the village wasn't serving ramen- and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

"I don't know about you, but I'm gonna go find my team."

Gaara heaved a sigh and took another tiny bite of fish. His shaggy red hair- badly in need of a cut- and his torn and threadbare clothes belied his manners. There was a small group of girls in the back of the room, all somewhere between the ages of twelve and fifteen, who were watching him eat with rapturous expressions on their faces, giggling every time he turned to look at them. Kankuro had apparently noticed them to, and was smirking knowingly at his brother's slightly edgy look.

"How are you going to find them? We were lucky. We guessed, just happened to find someone who could fly us here, and Temari was indeed on this island."

Behind Gaara, the girls giggled again, and a somewhat pained expression crossed his face. He cleared his throat, pointedly ignoring the girls and pressing on doggedly.

"What are the chances of that happening again?"

Naruto sighed heavily, rubbing his forehead with the back of one filthy hand and leaving it dirtier than before.

"But I've gotta find them somehow! I'll ask around as long as I have to, but I am going to find them."

Suki gave three shinobi a _long_ look, taking in filthy clothes, the smudges of dried mud on their faces and hands, and the bloodstains on Kankuro's sleeveless, torn shirt. She smirked suddenly, and only Temari's death-grip on the edge of the table kept her from attacking the other girl there and then.

"You need new clothes. If you'd turned up looking like that without the Avatar, I would have told my squad to throw you to the Unagi."

There was dead silence for a few seconds as Gaara and Kankuro stared at her. Gaara's face was skeptical, his non-existent eyebrows raised over hooded eyes, and Kankuro looked angry and uneasy. He glanced out the window at the distant view of the bay, where the shadow of the huge guardian circled restlessly, then scowled at Suki.

"Not funny, ja."

"It wasn't intended to be."

"You-"

Gaara laid a hand on his brothers shoulder, and Kankuro swallowed whatever he had been about to say.

"And you can get us new clothes? I don't like islands, ja. I'd like to leave here as soon as possible."

Suki ignored him, going straight back to her sneering match with Temari. The chief smiled apologetically at Aang and his companions, gesturing for them to follow him towards the door.

"Temari-san, Suki! Please. We must find somewhere for the Avatar and his fellow travelers to stay for the night…

* * *

"Gaara, can't you make them go _away_? I need to change clothes, ja!"

Gaara peered out the window at the girls, who ducked behind trees, peeking occasionally and giggling.

"Honestly, nii-san. If I could just make them leave me alone, do you think I would put up with those near-constant interruptions of my work back in Suna? I have no control over the situation."

Temari, now that Suki was no longer there to glare at, had finally noticed her little brother's new fanclub, which had doubled in size since dinner the day before. Aang, having given the crowd of girls a critical look, had announced professionally that this new mob of girls was a combination of _his_ fanclub- which had not shrunk since last year- and the ones drawn by the fascination of newcomers.

Katara had had Temari pegged as the 'protective sister' type, but the older girl seemed to find the entire thing hilarious. She wasn't lifting a finger, sprawled on a bedroll in the corner, to get rid of the girls stalking her little brother.

There was an argument going on in the house that had been hastily vacated, and Katara was sitting in a corner, completely ignored. She didn't mind. It was quite entertaining.

"Go on then! How much do you wanna bet they'll take off as soon as you start changing?"

"Shut up, ja!"

"You just don't want to bet because you know I'll win. Admit it…"

"No."

"Oh, so you know it's true, you just refuse to _say_ it."

"I- You- Aaagh! Why is our entire family insane?!"

"Just you, sweety-pie."

"…"

"Silent treatment? That's _so_ mature, Kankuro!"

Gaara, unfortunately, decided now was the best time to break up the party.

"Just get changed, Kankuro. Temari, you should find somewhere as well. Go."

The boy smoothed his new outfit absentmindedly- blue and white, like the rest of the villager's clothes- and flipped his hair out of his eyes. Immediately, Temari was pushing herself into a standing position, holding a worryingly sharp knife in one hand.

"Thank you for reminding me!" She advanced on her little brother, whose air of calm assurance immediately fled in the face of her overly-triumphant smile.

"Haircut time!"

Kankuro groaned and threw Gaara a 'what did you do _that_ for?' kind of look, then grabbed the neatly folded clothes and vanished hurriedly into the back room of the house, leaving his brother to the mercy of their big sister.

"Don't think you're getting out of it, Kankuro! You need a haircut just as badly as Gaara does!"

No reply from the other room, except what might have been a sulky silence. Temari dragged Gaara to a seat, then grabbed a chunk of his hair in one hand and started trimming. Gaara sat patiently, only wincing occasionally as she caught a knot with her fingers or as the kunai she was flipping from hand to hand went flying past one ear with great speed and a whirring sound.

Katara nearly jumped up once or twice as the blur of the knife all but took a notch out of Gaara's ear, but it became apparent as hanks of red hair coated the ground at Temari's feet, that she knew what she was doing. She handled the kunai with easy expertise, even if her skill at cutting hair was somewhat lacking. She appeared to be chopping hair at random, grabbing whatever caught her eye and scything it off. To be frank though, it didn't look much worse than it used to. At least it wasn't over his eyes anymore.

The door next to Katara opened, and Kankuro dropped down to sit beside her, straightening his shirt and letting his three scrolls fall next to him. At his own specific request, someone in the village had found black clothes in his size, well-worn but clean, and he somehow managed to make them look new.

"Why black?"

"I like black, ja."

"Kankuro! Get over here!"

Temari shoved the kunai into the wall, then pulled Gaara over to Katara and sat him down. "Kankuro…"

The boy swatted her hands away lazily, but eventually Temari managed to get a hold of his hair and tug.

"Haircut. You. _NOW_!"

"Okay, fine… _Ow_! Jeez! I was coming, you didn't have to pull!"

Gaara gestured Katara to follow him and headed out into the sunlight, ignoring the girls that followed him from a distance.

"I have been observing as Bei-fong-san trains, and I would appreciate it if you would explain to me your techniques. Of course, if these are unique skills, you are not obligated to tell me anything."

"Unique skills? No, not at all, it's just a talent that some people are born with. You use- Wait. You don't know what bending is?"

Gaara held an arm out in front of him, then bent his arm at the elbow a few times.

"Yes, I can bend. What does that have to do with your techniques? You do not form hand-seals, and your chakra doesn't obviously connect to the earth or water. It is like nothing I've ever seen before-"

There was an incoherent yell from the building, scaring the birds out of several nearby trees. Gaara rubbed his forehead as the sounds of his brother's unintelligible voice was quickly stifled.

"Oh dear. If he starts frightening villagers…"

"If you don't know what bending is," said Katara, unwilling to let go of this fact now that someone had openly admitted it, "how are you moving the sand?"

Gaara didn't stir a muscle, but the sand flowed smoothly out of his gourd and over his hands, writhing in its eerily sentient way.

"It's a personal talent."

"But we've met some benders who work sand, and _they_ had to move to-"

"It's an _individual_ talent. I think if anyone else had the same means of controlling the sand that I have, I would have heard about it. I am… high-ranking in my village. I would know."

"How high-ranking?"

"I was the leader. The Kazekage."

Noticing Katara's nonplussed face, he continued, heading into the forest with slow, deliberate strides.

"I ruled my village. The youngest ruler ever to be in power over the hidden village of the Land of Wind… Up until a few days ago, anyway."

Katara hurried after the boy, falling in step beside him. He was an inch or two shorter than her, even with his hair sticking up haphazardly and his flawless posture.

"What happened a few days ago?"

Gaara smiled calmly, turning his face to the sun.

"I died."

* * *

One of the upsides of having Temari for a sister was that she genuinely, fiercely cared for the well-being of her brothers. One of the myriad of downsides was that she pried into their business and made it her own. And as an off-shoot of her caring nature, she troubled herself with their _relationships_ as well.

"So… tell me about these people you're traveling with."

Silence. Temari stopped cutting, resting a sisterly hand on her brother's shoulder.

"Come on… You've been moody all morning."

More silence. Then;

"Temari?"

"Yeah?"

"Girls make my head hurt, ja. They don't make any _sense_."

Temari smiled and continued cutting, ruffling up her brother's thick brown hair.

"Any girl in particular? Or just the female population?"

Under the hand that Temari was still resting on his shoulder, Kankuro tensed almost imperceptibly and she stifled a laugh. Jackpot.

"What are you talking about?"

"Oh, nothing." _Not the little short angry one. Not one of the village girls, because he ignores them completely. Hmmm_…

"Like- in a completely hypothetical sense- that 'Katara' girl you're traveling with-"

"What about her?"

…And win. Temari smirked, _knowing_ that he knew that she knew, and started on the back of his neck.

"Well, you answered that question quickly. Pretty girl, huh?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, ja."

"Liar."

"Why is it any of your business?"

"Well, I'm the one with a kunai that just so happens to be pressing against your throat. And anyway, it's a sister's job to pry into their little brother's relationships."

"_Little_ brother'? I'm two or three inches taller than you! Finish cutting already and then get that thing away from me."

Temari complied, although the triumphant smirk remained.

"It's the thought that counts though! _Mentally_, I'm older, smarter, stronger _and_ taller than you."

"Shut up."

"No. So anyway, Katara?"

"So anyway, Shikamaru?"

Temari's hands didn't falter. She must have gotten used to this line of questioning. "I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh, but I think you do, ja."

"Kankuro, we've been through this before; he is my fellow proctor on the Chuunin exams. No ulterior motives, nothing but platonic… friendship."

"Um…"

"Yeah, right, ja."

"Excuse me…"

"The lazy crybaby can barely drag himself out of bed for his Hokage's _orders_, let alone for a girl. He'd make a lousy boyfriend."

"Uh…"

"You've _thought_ about it? I thought that thinking such thoughts was unthinkable, ja!"

"I wanted to…"

Temari turned impatiently to the stammering teenage girl standing in the door, still brandishing the kunai in one hand, and the girl flinched away.

"Good _grief_, just say it already! If you're going to be anywhere near us, you need to learn to make yourself heard! Who are you and what do you want?"

The girl muttered something nearly inaudible, blushing beet-red and looking at the floor.

"Beg pardon, ja? Can't hear a word you're saying. If you're looking for Gaara, he's out walking with one of his friends-"

The girl looked- if possible- even more alarmed, and she edged backward slightly, glancing at the woods as though afraid something might come out of them.

"Okay then, _not_ Gaara. You don't have to be afraid of him, you know. He doesn't bite." Kankuro and Temari shared glances, smiling at some private joke. "-anymore, at least."

The girl shook her head mutely, then took a deep breath and looked straight at them for the first time.

"We just… wanted to ask if… wouldyouliketogowalkingwithus?"

"What?"

Temari sheathed the kunai with an expert flick of her hand and pushed her brother towards the girl, smirking.

"I do believe that she and a few of her friends want to get to know you better, Kankuro. Go on… make friends with the villagers. I'm done here."

The girl, apparently heartened by lack of refusal, led Kankuro out into the sunlight.

"We thought, maybe we could show you the village? And we w-want to know what you do."

"What I… _do_?"

"You're traveling with the Avatar, r-right? What're you good at?"

Kankuro's smile grew ever-so-slightly evil, and he ducked into the room to grab his scrolls out of the corner and sling them over one shoulder, rejoining the girl outside the door.

"I'll show you, ja. Have you got a training ground here?"

"Don't give anyone a heart attack, boy! Those things are so _freaky_-looking."

The girl nodded, pointing off towards the trees. "Over there. I-I'm Mia."

"You say that like you're not sure, ja. Bye, Temari."

"If you see the Uzumaki brat, tell him we have new clothes for him up here!"

Temari watched them go, watched them get casually joined by several other girls, then watched as they vanished from sight. _Well then_… she reached behind the packs in the corner and pulled out a long, heavy piece of black metal that glinted dully in the reflected light of the windows. Time to show those sissy girls who thought they were better than her the true power of the Suna kunoichi.

* * *

"You… _died_."

"Yes."

"…how?"

Gaara shook his head regretfully, finger-combing his hair into a messy excuse for a part.

"I apologize, but if you do not know, it's not in my village's best interests for me to tell you. That is classified information of the highest degree."

The two of them had wandered aimlessly down the slope as they talked, and now they were standing, looking at the lake from a high shelf of rock that caught the light.

"So you _can't_ tell me, or you _won't_ tell me? If you're the leader, can't you tell anyone you want?" Gaara frowned suddenly, giving her a sharp look.

"Why do you want to know?"

Katara backed away as the cork slid out of the gourd and vanished into fine spray of sand.

"Because people don't usually come back from the dead, that's all. Please stop with the sand, it's freaking me out."

Gaara nodded and the sand slid back out of sight.

"I suppose so. Most people don't have the greatest medic-nin in the world ready to sacrifice her life to save them."

"How?"

"How what?"

"You can bring people back from the dead? How?"

"A life-transfer jutsu." Katara opened her mouth to ask, but Gaara held up a hand to stop her. "I can't tell you. Village secret."

"What's a jutsu?"

Gaara gave her a look which plainly said 'that's not funny', and scrambled down off the ledge, landing lightly in the grass at its base. Katara dropped down behind him, running to catch up.

"Hey! I'm serious; I have no idea what you're talking about! What's a 'jutsu'?"

Gaara stopped walking abruptly, then turned to stand in front of her.

"I will demonstrate. Cover your mouth and nose please, because I have been informed by several persons unnamed that the sand 'gets everywhere'."

He reached out a fist and the sand wrapped around her like a thick blanket, lifting her feet off the ground and covering all of her but her face. Katara nearly screamed, but the sand only held her for a few seconds before dissipating and becoming once again a snake of sand that flowed back into Gaara's gourd.

"That is the most basic and effective killing technique in my considerably large arsenal. Be very glad that I am not as I used to be, or you would be dead already. A jutsu is the manipulation of chakra to enhance the abilities of the user to their fullest extent. Alternatively, it can be used to produce results normally impossible in _any_ circumstances. For example, the technique used by medic-nin, where healing chakra is expelled from the hands to restore the recipient to health, is only possible by manipulation of chakra."

He waited to see if Katara would say anything, but she just stared at him, her face blank.

"This is a dilemma, for though you say you have no comprehension of jutsu, you used a healing technique on my brother. How is this possible?"

"It just… came with the Waterbending, I guess. Not all of us can heal. What's 'chakra'? Is it the same thing as the…" She tried to remember what little Aang had been able to tell them about his training to attain the Avatar State. "…The seven chakras? We know a little bit about those."

Gaara nodded, staring at her contemplatively from the shadows of a huge tree, the reflected light making his eyes glow slightly.

"The seven chakras are… I don't know, actually. You would have to ask Aang about that. Are they anything alike?"

"Quite possibly. Can you manipulate your chakra into a different area of your body?"

Katara laughed, then stopped when she realized that he wasn't joking.

"I'm not even sure what they _are_, let alone how to manipulate them. What can you do with chakra?"

Gaara crouched, took a deep breath, and then leapt twenty feet straight up. He landed in a perfectly balanced crouch on a branch above her head, then stood up and walked casually _under_ the limb, hanging upside-down in front of her.

"My chakra control is not as fine as my brother's, but I am at least a little bit better than Temari. And _this_," he gestured around him at the upside-down world, then did a neat flip and landed at Katara's side. "-is only one of the practical applications of chakra. You could ask Kankuro or Temari to show you more, although I believe you have already made contact with Kankuro's puppets. You followed him when he was training a few days ago, and came back no longer trying to kill each other."

"Those wooden… things?"

Gaara laughed, a surprisingly mature laugh from his adolescent face, and waved his hands in a vague approximation of his brother's practiced movements.

"Do not allow him to hear you refer to them in such a way. He is very proud of those puppets. But yes, they are slightly disturbing to me and Temari as well. But you haven't seen Temari in action yet, have you?"

Katara shook her head, remembering the huge fan and the blast of wind strong enough to knock them over.

"Do you know where she is?"

Gaara smiled wryly, starting up the hill at a leisurely pace.

"We'll find her soon enough. If I have _any_ aptitude at judging my sibling's thoughts, we should be hearing the screams any time now."

* * *

"Uzumaki. What are you doing here?"

Naruto paused in mid-block and got whacked in the side of the head by a fan as punishment.

"Um… sparring. With Suki-chan?" Naruto stopped Suki's second blow with one hand, twisting it away without looking.

Temari sighed, obviously irritated, and motioned him off the field with an authoritative wave of her hand.

"I have to finish something here. Girl…_Suki_. I need to fight you." Temari swept the iron rod of her fan off her shoulders, snapping open with one hand.

Suki crossed her arms belligerently across her chest. If she was fazed by the giant fan, she didn't show it, although her team was eyeing it warily.

"What if _I_ don't want to fight you?"

Temari smiled a singularly nasty smile that didn't extend to her eyes, then sent a violent blast of wind past Suki to slam into the trees behind her. When the air cleared, slices several inches deep were scored into the tree trunks, and a few of the younger trees were carved into pieces.

"What if I don't care?"

The Kyoshi warriors murmured angrily, hands moving to their sheathed fans, but Suki held up a hand to stop them.

"It's all right. Stay back, okay? This could get-" She never finished that sentence, barely managing to dive out of the way of another gale-force wind from Temari's fan.

"Dishonorable," snapped Suki, drawing both fans in one sweeping movement. "-You attack before your opponent is ready, even though _you_ initiated the challenge!"

Temari smiled, bowing mockingly as the other girl snapped her fans open sharply and started to slowly circle her. Her indifferent slouch belied her sharp eyes, which sized Suki up guardedly as she paced slowly, keeping her in sight.

"Just returning the favor. I don't appreciate being humiliated, so I thought I would show you just how lucky you were that I was practically unconscious when you _ambushed_ me."

She readied her fan for another swing and Suki dove under her guard, locking their weapons together with a ringing scrape of metal. Temari twisted hard, driving down with all her weight, but Suki pulled away, twisting like a cat in midair as the iron fan thudded into the earth next to her head.

"You'll have to do better than _that_."

"Nee-san."

Temari didn't make the same mistake as Naruto. Her only indication that she was surprised at all by her brother's sudden appearance was the way her eyes flickered towards him, and she never turned away from her opponent.

"Yes, Gaara?"

"I _did_ ask you not to seek out these girls for retaliation, Temari."

Temari bowed formally, her eyes still on her 'enemy'.

"Yes, you did. Permission to continue with this battle anyway?"

Gaara looked from Temari to Suki, who was slowly trying to circle around behind her, obviously not put off by the idea of a fight.

"Yes… but no major injuries."

"Fair enough."

"Temari!"

Temari dropped her fan to her side, rolling her eyes as she turned to scowl at her second brother. Suki frowned, but, obviously loathe to attack someone when their back was turned; she also dropped her guard, watching with suspicion her opponent's every move.

"_What,_ Kankuro?"

Her brother leaned lazily against a tree, holding up both hands in a gesture of peace. Two giggling teenage girls- one with long, shining black hair and big, innocent eyes, one with a blonde ponytail- watched with interested appreciation as Gaara came to sit next to his brother. One whispered to the other, causing another outbreak of stifled giggles.

"Nothing, nothing. Please, don't kill me, ja. And please don't kill _her_ either," a nod in Suki's direction- "Because that would get us kicked off the island for sure. I thought you weren't supposed to go around attacking people."

"Stop interfering!" Temari flicked a blade of wind at her brother, who flickered and vanished. The two girls turned slowly to look behind them and then shrieked at the sight of a deep slice taken out of the tree. One end came within inches of the blonde one's hand.

"Mind the civilians, nee-san."

Kankuro dropped from the trees, landed lightly next to Gaara, and grinned an insufferable grin. Temari sneered back at him, but she looked away first, re-focusing instead on Suki. The girls raised their weapons in unison- Temari grinning anticipatorily, Suki official and expressionless- and for half a second there was silence. Then… well… It was hard to follow- except for the ninja, whose eyes were trained to faster movement than the islanders watching the fight- but most of the first few minutes was Suki dodging Temari's vicious, continuous attacks. When the two young women finally separated, bruises were rising on several nasty welts marking the Suna-nin's bare arms, and Suki had a shallow but bloody slice from her shoulder to her elbow. There was a hint of respect in Temari's narrowed eyes, a tiny smile on her lips as she slung her fan over her shoulders.

Naruto was watching closely, uncharacteristically silent and thoughtful with his hands in his pockets. He looked vaguely disapproving and surprisingly mature. Kankuro and Gaara were holding a whispered conversation, which culminated in money changing hands and a shared grin.

Only a few snatches of dialogue were audible- things like 'three to one' and '-using chakra yet… not a chance.'

* * *

Suki wasn't listening. Either this girl had grown far stronger since the warriors had captured her or she had been genuinely injured at the time. Neither seemed likely. She had looked perfectly healthy, albeit abnormally lethargic, and was perfectly willing to swear and yell at her captors when they asked her name and allegiances.

"Don't play around, Temari."

Naruto shook his head, making a motion with one hand as if to hurry his fellow ninja along.

"Just use your chakra and get it over with. You're doing the same thing you did to that one girl at the Chuunin Exams! Don't toy with people like that."

Suki was confused, but didn't show it. That would be revealing a weakness, even though the apparent existence of another weapon was troubling news. Her opponent looked from the loud blonde boy to the small, pale one as though she needed permission- he gave her a resigned nod of approval.

Suki readied her weapons as the girl turned back to face her, tensed her muscles to attack- and fell to the ground as something solid and heavy slammed into the back of her head. The last thing she heard as darkness swamped her vision was:

"Hah! Under five minutes, ja! Pay up, little brother!

* * *

**Okay. Because I've had an incredible amount of delays (And also mostly because of a long stretch of writer's block coupled with personal laziness) this took forever coming out. Sorry! I didn't intend to take so long, honestly!**

**:edit: Fixed the 'nee-san', 'nii-san' thing! Sorry- I didn't know they were gender specific. XD**

**To my wonderful reveiwers:**

**NarutoRamen2008: Thank you! It's always good to hear that! Naru/Toph isn't really my taste, no, but Sakura has a very good chance of showing up. How? Uhhh... By Will of the Author! Yeah! But I'm probably going to keep adults out of it- too many characters already, for one thing! XD Thank you for your review!**

**QueenMeStar: NaruSaku Love. Totally. (I don't mean to offend anyone- that's just my opinion on the matter) and if (when) Sakura shows up there will be at least a little movement in that direction. Don't want to take things too fast if I can help it, but then again I probably can't... Ah, well. Thank you for your time!**

**WolvenWindNinja: Thank you for the enthusiastic appreciation! I can't drink coffee, so reveiws are all that keeps me awake to write sometimes, and this was very welcome. Yes, Kiba was a 'problem prisoner'. He's got a big escape and a bit of walking to do if he's going to reach anyone familiar, but the Inuzuka are a stubborn bunch. XD What? The Timeline? I'm afraid I didn't hear the question- ask again later. _shifty glances towards door_ Thank you for your enthuiasm!**

**Pinkchocolate28m: I'm glad to hear it! Sakura may very well end up in the Water Kingdom- somewhere where she can explain things slowly and calmly to Neji and make him stop trying to attack innocent Waterbenders (_Bad _Neji! _Bad._) And you... a reviewer since the first chapter... I hold you in my heart forever!! _manly tears of youth_ Thank you for your diligence!**

**Kammari: I do my humble best, Sir/Madam! I'm sorry if I've been absent- it's been a long couple of weeks. Thank you for your attention!**

**Shadow Zeranion: Interesting in a good way? Please? My favorites in pairings are usually NaruSaku, ShikaTema and KibaHina (and a myriad other tiny crack-pairings) but that's not to say I couldn't write other ships- or that I hate them or dislike them at all! But I think this one's goin' to NaruSaku, sorry. I would call Toph 13, I think. Older would definately be stretching it, y'think? Thank you for weighing in!**

**TheBecMan: And to you also, I say this greeting of 'Coolies'! Coolies, my... brother? Sister? Whichever you are, thanks for reviewing!**

**SandShinobi00: Heheh... Next update, huh? I'll try to be faster on the next one, promise! The least of my problems is that I've suddenly gained two new canons, which pull my mind away from this story...sniffle But I'll try to get a new one out this week at any rate! (month) Thank you for reading!**


	6. Chapter 5: Hot and Cold

**New chapter! A bit of an improvement on last time's update speed, yeah? In which C.V. randomly changes views from her main characters to two different voices chosen almost completely at random. XD **

* * *

Chapter 5: Hot and Cold

Haruno Sakura opened her eyes, then squeezed them shut and rubbed them, trying to make the blurriness go away. She felt sick too, and freezing wetness was soaking into the back of her shirt. _Priority one_- said her medic-nin brain- _get out of the cold_.

She staggered to her feet, looking around her for shelter or something to use as a blanket. It took her a few seconds to absorb what she was seeing, but when she was where she was she immediately pulled a kunai from the pouch at her back. She was in a room full of weapons, blue and silver inlaid with black, her thin summer clothes nearly frozen to the ice beneath her.

Her breath misted in front of her, shallow and rapid- she forced herself to calm down, to think rationally. She didn't remember coming here- in fact, she'd never seen a place like this in her life. It seemed to be sculpted out of opaque ice, and no one would bother carving that much detail unless it was going to stay all year round. The village of snow? Unlikely. She would be restrained by now, not left alone with a whole room of weapons at her disposal. It rarely snowed this heavily in the land of fire, no matter what season it was, and it would take a long time to carve a building like this anyway…

Sakura became aware that her teeth were chattering. She needed to move out _now_, before she became some kind of macabre ice-statue. She forced herself onto her numb feet, cursing her once-comfortable toeless sandals. She would need new clothes to survive without getting frostbite, even holding it off with healing chakra.

_Moving now. New priority list. One; proceed cautiously. Always in precedence for a Shinobi. Two; new clothes. Tsunade-shishou would pitch a fit if she could see me in these clothes right now. Three… find out where the I am. _

She was just stumbling toward the door when a distant sound stopped her dead in her tracks. Footsteps. Sakura scanned the room hurriedly, searching frantically for somewhere to conceal herself. She could defend herself with these weapons if necessary, but that would be her last resort only. She was in a mysterious place, up against an unknown number of possible enemies with indefinite levels of strength, and it paid to be prudent. Any wrong move could be fatal for her and start a war between nations.

Sakura ducked behind a rack of weapons made out of something that looked like giant teeth- only _looked_ like, of course. No one made weapons out of _teeth_, surely? It wouldn't hide her for long, but maybe she could get a feel for the strength and numbers of her potential enemies. It sounded like ten at most. They were running, yelling to each other in panicked voices. Something about intruders at the gate and mysterious powers. Reinforcements were needed, apparently. That was good for her- if there was an attack on their village, they might not notice one young Shinobi sneaking out.

The footsteps got closer, and a squad of men ran through the arched door, panting as though from a long run. _That_ wasn't good. If the attack was on the gate and they were tired after the run, the gate was a good distance from this building she was in.

Sakura studied the men, looking for any indication of where she was. No forehead protectors, no Chuunin vests. They were wearing blue and white furs, and her shivers seemed to renew as the warm-looking clothes reminded her of her own exposure. Her thin, sleeveless cotton shirt and a skirt were hardly adequate for the weather here, and she found herself fighting the urge to just attack them and steal herself some better ones.

The men grabbed weapons, barely stopping for a breather before running straight out the door again. Sakura venture out cautiously, started out the door, then doubled back and grabbed one of the shining white and blue weapons. Couldn't hurt to have an extra. She glanced out of the door just in time to catch sight of the retreating heels of the men who'd just left.

The hallway outside the door was much the same as the room she had just left- carved out of thick, opaque ice, with beautifully detailed carvings around the few other arched doors visible from where she was standing.

Sakura followed the sounds of footsteps, then brushed through a curtained door into the icy air of… a city of _ice_? How long must this place have taken to carve? The buildings around her where much the same as the one she had just left, although in different shapes and sizes and levels of grandeur.

In some strange way, it reminded her of the few times she had seen the hidden village of sand. The atmospheres were completely opposite, but they had the same feeling of being built in defiance of the elements- of being constructed in seemingly impossible locations, where most people wouldn't even _think_ of trying. And the strange sense of beauty, as well.

Being in Suna sounded good right now- thought Sakura, suddenly remembering her numb feet and fingers- because while she had been gaping at the scenery, valuable time had been passing. She had to go.

* * *

By the time Sakura reached the gate, she was absolutely sure she had never seen this place in her life. Blue-clothed men and women whispered nervously in alleys and icy houses like the one she had left, and none of them noticed as she jumped from rooftop to rooftop. She had been worried that, once outside, she wouldn't be able to find the gates, but that was no longer a problem. A towering wall of ice surrounded the frozen city, and although she couldn't see the gate, she was sure that she could climb over it with ease once she was close enough. She jumped to a spire near the wall. Why weren't there any sentries? The top of the wall was unguarded, although there were footprints in the light snowfall. They must have run off to deal with the disturbance on the other side of the wall.

Sakura vaulted onto the wall, peering down over the edge- and stopped dead. The blue and white-clothed men were surrounding two familiar figures. They were dressed as inappropriately for the weather as she was, although they seemed to at least have long sleeves. Their enemies were using unfamiliar water-jutsu, directing the water with long, fluid motions of their arms and hands to attack the two, much smaller figures standing back-to-back. They were using much the same motions, their hands glowing with power, and as Sakura watched a spear of ice went flying towards them, aiming straight for the taller form's head. He shouted something inaudible and spun, faster than sight. A blue-white sphere of chakra shattered the spike into needle-sharp spikes. Some of the men fell, clutching injuries as blood soaked into the snow.

Sakura didn't know what technique the enemy was using, but she knew one thing for sure- those two down there were Shinobi from her own village, and they were in trouble.

Neji panted, icy air stinging his lungs and the scratches from slivers of ice. The effort of fending off so many attacks was having an affect on him- cold sweat trickled down his face despite the sub-zero temperature of the environment, chilling him even further and practically turning to ice on his skin.

He didn't know where he was, but they had been attempting to ambush him and he had attacked on instinct, sending a blast of Jyuuken into the man's main chakra system. He would be fine if they got a medic-nin to look at him within a few days. The others weren't wearing forehead-protectors, but they were using strange water techniques, the likes of which he had never seen before. They used no handseals, moving the water as though with some strange variation of the puppeteer technique he had seen at the Chuunin exam some years ago. But that was unique to the land of wind, surely? Neji put it out of his mind, suddenly breaking formation with Hinata to duck under a man's guard and deliver a blow to each of his shoulders. The water he had summoned shiver like a living thing, then collapsed into drops of water and soaked into the snow.

There was a shout from above, and he jumped back as the ice in front of him shattered into chunks big enough to crush a human without a trace. His crystalline eyes widened as the mist of snow and ice cleared, revealing a familiar head of pink hair.

"Haruno! What are you doing here?"

Hinata let out an involuntary shriek and dove to one side as blades of ice demolished the ground beneath her and left a shallow slice on one of her shoulders. Neji spun around, and, seeing the blood dripping on the snow, slid immediately into his Jyuuken stance. The sky seemed to darken as he deepened it even more- chakra glowing around his hands and glowing in his eyes.

"Wait!"

Sakura grabbed the Hyuga's arm as he gathered power to knock every man within thirty feet unconscious.

"There's hundreds more coming! Why are you fighting? Are they an enemy nation- do _you_ know where we are?"

Neji eased out of his fighting stance, but he didn't de-activate his Byakugan.

"No. You're… right." It almost sounded like it pained him to say so. "But they have attacked us now and- more importantly- they spilled Hinata-san's blood. As her branch family guardian, I cannot let the perpetrator to go unpunished."

Sakura waved at him to wait and slowly unbuckled her kunai pouch, laying it on the ground in front of her. She could tell which man was probably the leader- he stood in front, older than the others but with a battle-hardened face. She walked a few paces forward, holding her hands out with her empty palms facing up.

"Haruno!" Hissed Neji from behind her- and the tremor in his voice belied his pretense of not being cold at all, despite his best efforts to disguise it.

"Why are you attacking us?" Asked Sakura slowly, directing the question to the man who appeared to be the leader.

"Attacking _you_? The boy began this battle- he attacked one of our scouts, completely unprovoked!"

_Ah_. Well, this put a whole new spin on things. Sakura turned to glare at Neji, trying to ignore the way she couldn't feel her feet.

"_Why?_"

Neji looked unrepentant. On anyone else the face could have been described a 'sulky'. On him it looked exactly like the expression of an offended nobleman looking at a lowly peasant.

"They attempted to creep up on me while I was in a state of repose. I took action in self-defense."

"You were _asleep_? In the territory of a likely enemy?"

Now he _definitely_ looked sulky.

"I fell asleep in my own quarters and when I woke up a man was standing over me with a weapon and I… reacted accordingly."

"You- ugh. Y'know what, never mind! This is all your fault, so it's your job to explain and _apologize_!"

Neji's expression went from angry to affronted to disbelieving in several cramped seconds.

"I _what_?!"

"Apologize. NOW!"

"You are not my superior, you have no right to-"

"Neji-nii-san? I think that would be a good idea."

Hinata, never good with cold in the first place, was as white as the snow she was standing on, and Sakura was horrified to see that she was barefoot. Neji looked mortified, which probably he meant he had seen the same thing. He hesitated for a second, and then turned to the man who he had recently been fighting and bowed reluctantly.

"I… wish to apologize for my actions. Your men's approach startled me. May we please bring my cousin into your city? As her guardian my first priority is her safety, and she is not equipped for this extreme temperature. I have no hatred for you or your people, so will you allow us this… please." The politeness was obviously forced to a watching ninja, but these men were obviously _not_ ninja. They retreated, talking amongst themselves, while one of them kept watch over the three Shinobi.

Neji carefully lifted Hinata in his arms, ignoring her protests, and crouched on the ground by Sakura, giving her a worried look. His cousin was shivering violently, her slimmer build and summer clothing working against her in the sub-zero temperatures. Her feet were a stark white, nearly blue, and critically close to frostbite- numb and nearly immobile, ice-crystals and snow clinging to the skin without melting.

Sakura winced sympathetically, forcing her pitifully small reserve of chakra into Hinata's sluggish chakra system in a temporary fix. She _would _get serious frostbite if they didn't get her inside fast. Sakura looked impatiently over her shoulder at the huddle of men. What was taking them so long?

* * *

Nara Shikamaru was bored. It was better than it could have been, he supposed, because the _last_ thing he wanted to do was fight in a war for people he'd never seen before and a country he had no loyalty for.

Then again, it would be interesting, and he would at least be outside. Prison-guard duty was not only terribly _dull_- he couldn't even see the clouds- but he didn't know where he was or who he was working for.

How troublesome.

The boy tugged at his ill-fitting fire nation armor, wondering what kind of army could fight in this rubbish. They would either have to be incredibly strong or they didn't rely on fast movement. Or both, maybe? It was all conjecture, of course, but the helmet's flame designs and the warm red and gold prevalent in their culture, were very in keeping with the displays of powerful fire-jutsu he had seen during the few drills the loud men had forced him to attend.

He had put aside his helmet as soon as the troublesome loud man had gone- it was uncomfortable and tacky and not doing his ponytail _or_ his headache any good- and by this time was leaning against a wall, eyes half-open, trying to go to sleep. It wasn't working. The lack of clouds, wind, and comfort were making it very hard to relax, even though the jail was as empty and silent as an unfilled tomb. What a morbid mental image.

Shikamaru had just started to drift off when there was a crash, a voice raised in anger, and a rather worrying tremor in the ground.

_Excitement? How troublesome. Just when I was getting used to the boredom, too. _

…

_Screw this, I'm going back to sleep. If they want me awake, they'll just have to give me a more interesting job. Not that that would be a good thing, of course…_

Then his eyes opened again, with more urgency.

"…Wait…"

The drill sergeant known to Shikamaru only as 'troublesome loud man' would have been surprised to see that his number-one lazy, sarcastic recruit could move that fast. He ran to the door, threw it open, and stared at the scene beyond in an uncharacteristic show of emotion.

Two fully grown fire-nation soldiers were wrestling with a heavily built teenage boy, and despite their obvious difference in size, apparently they were losing. The thick-set form and the mane of spiky brown hair were… strangely familiar.

"Choji?!"

"Boy! Get over here and help us restrain this- _gnh_…"

The man who had spoken had also loosened his grip- a dire mistake in the circumstances. A heavy fist slammed into his stomach and threw him into the wall, where he left a crater. And then… well… The other man really didn't stand a chance.

Two minutes later, the men were in a locked cell in the very back of the prison, and Akimichi Choji explaining what little he knew about the current situation. They were in an outlying settlement of the 'Fire Nation', which was full of people who mostly came from the 'Earth Kingdom'. They were surrounded by people with some kind of mysterious power. The Fire Nation had taken over the country- they were tyrannical, cruel, and oppressive to the people. It was like a whole different world- finished Choji- where everyone hated the land of fire.

Shikamaru showed very little emotion throughout, leaning against a wall with his eyes closed and his fingers steepled in front of him in his habitual 'thinking' position. Choji left him to it. He knew from experience that even if he did try to interrupt, his friend was too deep in his own thoughts to notice anything but a serious threat.

Well, that was all very well and good, and normally the Akimichi would have been willing to wait for as long as necessary until the genius had devised their next course of action, but… the family he had stayed with, while extremely kind and very welcoming of a dazed boy in strange clothing- had not been well off. To put it simply, Choji had been eating at about a third of his normal helpings for several days, and he was _starving_.

The cupboard in the corner of the guardroom yielded a few loaves of dry bread that had probably been there for weeks. Choji frowned, but wolfed them down anyway. He would eat almost anything at this point, no matter how distasteful- he needed all the chakra he could get, now that these soldier-people were looking for him.

Shikamaru had taken off his ill-fitting armor, tossing it on the ground with his 'troublesome, stupid, _itchy_ helmet', and was barefoot- apparently the boots made his feet hurt. He sighed heavily, looking world-weary and troubled and far more cynical than a fourteen-year-old had the right to be.

"This is one heck of a screwed-up mess. There are too many holes in the knowledge to make anything certain out of it at all, even for me."

Choji nodded. It wasn't bragging, just stating the truth. If anyone was smart enough to figure this thing out, it was Nara Shikamaru, and if _he _couldn't figure it out, his friend wasn't even going to try.

"So what do we do first?"

Shikamaru sighed, rubbing his temples as though thinking through such an inexplicable mess had given him a headache.

"First… we need to get out of this town. Those guards will wake up eventually, and they'll call for help. If they're as weak as those men you were fighting, we can take them on anyway, but that would be troublesome."

"And then?"

"We see if anyone else is in the same area. Is that food?"

Choji looked down at the last loaf of stale bread, and then shook his head slowly.

"No. No, definitely not."

"Ah. Well, I dare say you're hungrier than I am."

Choji nodded, hungry and unashamed. Shikamaru would understand an Akimichi's constant need for fuel- it was one of those things that didn't need to be vocalized anymore. Shikamaru would know what to do- Shikamaru would always be lazy. Choji would always have his friend's back and trust him implicitly- Choji would always be hungry. In both their minds, the qualities more than made up for the faults.

It was dark outside, moonless and cool, and no one saw the shadows of two teenagers vanish into the night, leaving barely a hint of their presence behind.

* * *

They were under arrest. _He_ was under arrest, and the ignominy was practically choking him. Hyuga Neji, Jonin-class Shinobi from the hidden village of leaves, captured by these fur-clothed barbarians! It was humiliating. However, it was obvious that this was the only way to avoid injury to Hinata-sama, and that was his utmost priority.

The guards had thrown them blue and white clothing like the furs they themselves were wearing, and Haruno had encouraged him to put them on, despite his chagrin at the thought of appearing to be native to this cold, alien land. They were bulky and ill-fitting, but- he had to admit- much warmer and more comfortable than the thinner summer clothing that he had woken up in.

Neji was sitting cross-legged in the corner of the makeshift cell, doing something too icily high-class to be pouting and too juvenile and annoying to be meditating. Every few minutes he would catch a guard looking at him and glower at him until the man looked away nervously. If there was one thing that any Hyuga was good at naturally, it was glaring, and Neji was a master.

Sakura was giving Hinata a brief once-over by the other wall, _tsk_ing and making professional-sounding comments about the affects of cold, the need for diplomacy, and the idiocy of certain 'ego-centric males'. Neji was icily ignoring her, although she wasn't even attempting to be discreet and the clipped sentences were easily audible from across the room.

Hinata was doing what she had the most experience doing- sitting still and thinking things over quietly while other people did the talking. It was what she had been trained to do ever since it had become clear to her father that she wasn't cut out to order others around and therefore was 'unsuitable'- in his eyes- for the position of Hyuga clan leader. Neji was staring down the younger of the two guards and Sakura was now attempting to communicate with the other, who was doing his best to ignore her continuous- but polite- questions. It wasn't working.

"-and again, _where_ are we, please?"

"…"

"Well then, would you mind telling me why you tried to sneak up on the idiot over there?"

"…He was an intruder."

"So we're not in the land of fire, then?"

The stony silence was renewed. Obviously these people didn't like the land of fire, or at least didn't like talking about it. Worth knowing, maybe? Sakura retreated- her curiosity satisfied for the moment- to think over this piece of information. _Very interesting_.

It was several hours before anything else interesting happened, and- although his eyes were still open- Neji's breathing suggested that he had fallen asleep in his icy, cramped corner before it did. The bars of ice that covered the door melted into the doorframe with barely a sound, and a man walked in with the confident stride of someone used to giving orders. His clothes were finer than the two men at his shoulders, and his lined face spoke of a long, full life and hard-won experience, although his shoulder-length hair was still dark.

Sakura hesitated and then bowed slightly to the man, glaring a Neji till he too nodded grudgingly, warily watching the two probably-bodyguards at the authoritative man's shoulders. One- the younger of the two- was glancing around the room, trying to take in everything all at the same time instead of watching for threats. Inexperienced, then. Not much of a threat to two Jonin-level ninja and one Chuunin. On the other hand, the older of the two- even older than the king, with long, thinning white hair and a mustache- was ignoring everything but the three Shinobi, his eyes darting from one to the next with an expression of irritable suspicion. This old man could be dangerous. Even the guards were keeping a respectful distance away, staring straight ahead with frozenly blank expressions. That hinted at a worrying level of power- the kind that even his comrades were slightly frightened of.

"I am the ruler of this city," said the authoritative man, acknowledging their respect with a small nod of his own. "-and I am informed that you were engaged in a battle with my men after you were found outside the gates with unsuitable clothing. Has the young woman with bare feet recovered fully?"

Hinata nodded mutely, watching the king guardedly with her blank, pupil-less eyes. It could be disconcerting, Sakura knew- when you weren't used to everyday contact with the Hyuga clan, at least- to be watched by those void, silver eyes.

"That is good news, because I need you to follow me. We have to ask you some questions, and I'd rather not do it standing up."

The Shinobi had barely moved when he had mentioned 'questions', but any other ninja could have seen the sudden tenseness in every muscle. The method of asking questions in a standard ninja village was _not_ to sit in a comfortable room and discuss things politely over a hot drink. Escape was definitely preferable, and even death was usually the better option. The neater option, certainly. These men didn't look capable of torturing someone for information, but above the rank of Genin most Shinobi had learned not to take people at face value- that was a good way to die an early death.

Sakura glanced at Neji, then Hinata- an unspoken question passing between the three of them.

"We'll come."

The two bodyguards walked forward- the younger one wasn't ready and lagged behind, somewhat spoiling an otherwise impressive affect- and flanked the three ninja, motioning the two men who had guarded their cell to go to the front and back. The younger of the two bodyguards put a firm hand on Hinata's shoulder and then pulled away with a yelp as Neji smacked his hand away and switched places with his cousin, putting her in the middle of the trio of Shinobi with a glare at the man who'd dared to get within five feet of his charge.

"Do _not_. Touch. My. Cousin."

He flashed his Byakugan and watched with satisfaction as the errant guard blanched and backed away, holding the hand that the Hyuga had smacked. It would be going numb up the elbow by now, Neji knew, and the hand would be aching a little. With such a small supply of chakra in his reservoir, the damage shouldn't spread or get much worse before it started to recede. He would have like to leave the man's arm lifeless for weeks, but that was impossible at the moment- and anyway, the other three guards would have attacked while he was occupied.

Sakura sighed heavily behind him, but she didn't seem especially inclined to lecture him at the moment. The likelihood of painful death had a tendency to do that to people, Neji noted absentmindedly, and gave the man a smile he knew for a fact was extremely unnerving before he rejoined his comrades and filed out of the room.

What the enemy didn't know _could _hurt them, and in this case the enemy didn't know what the silent question that passed between the three ninja had been. They also didn't know that- under the heavy furs they had given the three mystery teenagers- three kunai were held in ready.

What they don't know can kill them.

* * *

When Shikamaru finally decided it was safe to camp, the sun was rising over the horizon, sending shafts of light through the sparse trees of the patch of woodland he had chosen.

They would have gotten there sooner, but when they had finally found the home of the fire-nation man in charge of the town and gotten inside, they had been forced to fight his house-guards, his personal bodyguard- who had been on patrol at just the wrong time- and last but not least the cook, who had very nearly set Shikamaru on fire while he was in midair after dodging a half-full kettle of soup. The kettle left a dent in the wall; the blast from the woman's attack singed the boy's ponytail and very nearly started a fire.

Fortunately, the reason that the cook had been in so late was that the rich owner of the house had ordered a banquet for the next morning. The sacks on the ground next to the hastily acquired blankets were still warm, and the tantalizing scents of all the delicious food they could pack were making Choji's mouth water. He had eaten as much as he could before they had had to leave, but the smell reminded him just how hungry he had been over the last few weeks, and there was no such thing as to much food when you were an Akimichi. After all, food was chakra, and being caught without either was a very bad thing.

They had also stolen some clothes for Shikamaru, although Choji hadn't wanted to take any more than necessary from the people of the town. Shikamaru had assured his friend that he would only take enough for one outfit, but he had also pointed out that, in a country controlled by some twisted version of the land of fire, it would _not_ be advisable to walk around in the clothing of a nobleman of said nation.

Now they were lying, still fully clothed, on the forest floor. They had been running all night- on tree branches until their chakra ran out, then on the ground for hours afterwards- and neither of them had enough energy to unpack the blankets or start a fire. Shikamaru was already asleep, blessed with the ability to fall asleep almost anywhere- the fact that it was a cool, windy morning probably helped, but not as much as the early morning clouds drifting across the sky, dyed gold by the dawning sunlight.

In fact, what was keeping Choji awake at the moment was the smell of food spreading from the bulging bag that lay where Shikamaru had dropped it.

That and the question of their location, of course. This place was like, and yet unlike, their own world- _figuratively speaking, of course. It's not like this is a different _world _or anything_- where their own home country was the enemy and people used elemental manipulation techniques without handseals. Maybe there was a different continent across the sea that no one had reached yet? But if so, how did they get here?

Choji rolled over and caught sight of his friend's profile, silhouetted against a ray of rising sun. Shikamaru would figure it out. Shikamaru could figure anything out.

And with that comforting thought, he finally fell asleep- a smile on his face.

* * *

**Aaaaaaand... CHAPTER!! I hope this was good. Does anyone know the name of the ruler of the Northern Water Tribe? I would much appreciate it. **

**To the Amazing, Awesome, Incredible reviewers:**

**PennyArcadeFan2: Thank you very much! Reviews such as yours are what keeps me going and break through my writer's block.**

**avikar: Y'know that idea was part of the reason I started writing this story in the first place? Of course, I'm not sure at all how to write action scenes, but sometime in the future it will almost definitely happen. XD**

**BloodySeraphim: Sorry... Fixed now though, so that's okay, right? Heh... thanks for the critique. (It makes me a better person)**

**Helkat: Thank you for pointing it out! I'm going to have to work harder on my Nihongo if everybody else knows these things and I don't...**

**Sandshinobi00: Yay! Review! steals 'I is happy' flag to wave back Your wish is my action, sir/madam! I shall work till my fingers drop off!**

**Phnx: I shall do my best.**

**darthgamer: Yes! If it's an uber-chapter, does that make me an uber-author? I quite like the sound of that...**

**pinkchocolate28m: Well, you deserve them! And does not woman such as Suki show her love through excessive violence? Some relationships just work that way... Anyway, in this chapter we have our 'Neji fights Waterbenders', just as promised. And of course, Sakura, who tries to fix things and doesn't really succeed. XD **

**kyubbi-sama: Thank you!**

**bulrog the god: Yeah... I know it's kind of generic, but I really think it's going to happen in the show (that is- I think it's going to happen and I like it) so I think I'm sticking with it. That and Azula is a little bit... sadistic for Naruto, I think. (Although Kyuubi might like her. Hmmm... :D) Thanks for reviewing!**


	7. Note: Please read

Okay! Rejoice (if there is anyone still waiting XD) for I wrote a whole half a chapter today! The new chapter should be out with fair speed, and if I keep writing at the pace of the last few days (doubtful, but we can hope) the new chapter should be out before the school week starts again.

Hoping for forgiveness-

The Curious Vortex.


	8. Chapter 6: Small, Small World

**IT'S... AAAALLLIIIVE! And so am I! AND so is my computer, so hurrah for that. A thousand of my humblest apologies to those who thought that this was one of those cool stories that updates regularly, as opposed to the brainchild of a procrastinating late-nighter addict enmeshed (by her own fault) in about thirty other projects.**

**...**

**...So... yo. Good to be back. It doesn't feel like much happens in this chapter from my end, but I'm sure the characters see it very differently. Enjoy.**

* * *

Chapter 6: Small, Small World.

When Suki woke up, the first thing she saw was the roof of her quarters, swimming in and out of view, dappled with waving shadows. Her head felt like something was fighting to get out of it, and the pain got worse as she shifted uncomfortably, trying to ease whatever it was that was digging into the back of her skull. Finally, wincing with at the movement, she reached under her head to remove the offending object. There was nothing there. The thing she'd been feeling was a huge, scabbed bump, tender and painful at the slightest touch. _Oh._

"Suki!"

Suki sighed and let her head fall back on the pillow, allowing Sokka to grab her in an ever-so-slightly too tight- check that, in a _much _too tight hug.

"I thought you were concussed! Or _worse," _Sokka trailed off darkly, then hugged her again, his slightly scruffy ponytail tickling her nose.

"O…kay… Sokka- Sokka, get off… _Hey. Sokka._ That hurts."

He let go of her as though she was red-hot and put his hands on her shoulders in an attempt to push her down onto her mattress.

"Sorry! Sorry! You should lie down!"

"It doesn't hurt that much. Just a headache."

Sokka frowned over his shoulder at the open door. Almost as though…

"Oh good. You didn't die. You aren't actually as weak as you look. Hey, we need info."

"Temari, your presence is not… _required_ at this point."

"_And_, sandbox brat? Are you trying to say that Kankuro is better suited to this than I am?"

"At least I can keep my mouth shut. Just swallow your pride and get out, will you, nee-san?"

Suki seriously considered just lying back down and pretending to be asleep. That prideful blonde-haired harpy was the last person she needed to see right now. If it came to that, she didn't particularly feel like talking to the strange, shifty boy who came with her- the one with the sly black eyes- or the thin little eyebrow-less one with the piercing blue eyes and the unnatural hair.

"Don't you dare talk to me that way, _little _brother."

"At least _I_-"

"Kankuro. Temari."

Suki rolled over as the argument escalated, trying to ignore the noise- especially once Sokka decided to join in with a demand for quiet on her behalf. And all the while, that quiet voice continued.

"_Kankuro. Temari._"

Sand spiraled in the fresh spring air, finer and brighter than the coarse, brownish sand of the lake beach, and the squabble broke off in startled cries and profanities. Suki turned over again so fast she almost fell out of bed, then jumped out of bed so fast that she actually _did_ fall over. And then panicked when her hands found nothing but air at her sides, where her two forged war fans should have hung.

Sokka was struggling to fight back against the tentacles of sand that were pushing him persistently away from the other two newcomers, depositing him gently across the room. He was, however, much better off than the red-head's sister and brother- the girl was completely wound around in wire-thin strands of gold, and they must have been exceptionally strong- she was struggling as hard as she could, but the sand wasn't giving an inch. The annoying, brown-haired boy was actually being held off the ground by the shoulders, tugging at a gag of sand that had plastered itself to his mouth and neck, winding into his hair and around his throat.

"GAARA! ****!" Said Temari, along with several other choice words- some words that even Suki didn't know, versed as she was in profanities from her forays to the harbor. The boy, the one the red-head had called Kankuro, glared at his brother, made a rude hand-gesture, then relaxed with something that would have been a sigh if his mouth hadn't been covered.

Gaara stood up, straight and tall, and narrowed his eyes, his authority nearly palpable.

"_Go,_"

Something in the boy's voice denied all argument. The sand snaked back into the bulky gourd on his back, releasing his siblings and Sokka with a hissing rustle. Suki half expected them to fight back- from their show of rebellious irreverence earlier, they didn't worry much about the mysterious authority apparently possessed by their little brother- but immediately they both dropped on one knee, bowed silently, and vanished as fast as dissolving smoke.

Gaara turned to Suki and, relaxing his straight-backed posture slightly, bowed his head politely.

"I require a few minutes private conference with you, Suki-san."

* * *

Suna no Temari glowered straight ahead, ignoring the small, bald-headed boy running beside her. This kid really didn't know the meaning of the word _NO_. Not even when it was accompanied by profanity and the threat of a giant fan. And of all days, it had to be on the one where her baby brother decided he would be Kazekage. She _hated_ it when he pulled the 'Royal Authority' trick and he knew it.

"You use fan techniques? I use air too! Where did you learn? Are there other air-monks still left somewhere? It's okay to tell me, you know- I'm a monk myself-"

Temari groaned.

"What do the others use to move so fast if they're not airbenders? Where did you get that fan? Can you show me how they do that? It would be really cool!"

Okay. That was just a few steps too far. No Suna-nin would ever- _ever_- reveal their techniques to a ninja of another nation, especially not to someone they had only known for a matter of days. Even if the kid seemed to know some of them already. Alright, so if the kid wasn't so annoying, she might consider it, but he was chattering in her ear. Temari had always loathed people who couldn't shut up. She loaded the dregs of her chakra into her legs and took off into the treetops, mentally bemoaning her lack of soldier pills for situations like these.

"Hey! Wait!"

_Oh,****. _This kid was even more persistent than she'd thought. Temari didn't bother to look over her shoulder, opting instead to put on speed- no normal person could keep up with a ninja for long.

A few minutes later, she was beginning to doubt her previous thoughts. The boy was keeping up with her and showing barely a sign of slowing, whereas her legs where quickly weakening. A week of being locked in one cell without the opportunity for her daily exercises and without a way to accelerate the re-filling of her chakra reservoirs had left her drained and unusually weak- which, she mused as she ran, was rather pathetic. She needed to get back to her daily workout routine before she got soft.

She glanced behind her momentarily, then cursed under her breath. This wasn't getting anywhere. For a boy who claimed to know nothing about ninja, he was keeping up like a champion.

Temari skidded to a halt, then watched with a certain measure of satisfaction as he overshot, scrambling to turn around as he realized there was no longer anything to chase.

"C'mon… teach me! I thought I was a master, but if there's something I don't know, then I need to know it."

_Well_, she thought, staring at the earnest face in front of her, _I wonder if he'll leave me alone if I teach him the basics._

* * *

Naruto, when it came right down to it, was bored. He was bored and worried, and he didn't know where his team was, and the ramen in this town was only half as good (at best) as the ramen from Ichiraku. That, and the girls all seemed starved for any contact with any male at all. He had been a subject of mild interest, and then the girls had realized that he was with the 'Avatar', and suddenly he was the center of attention. He had finally managed to ditch the girls who were watching him expectantly, and was now exploring the forest and the island around him. So far he hadn't found a single interesting thing, apart from the occasional confrontation with the girls in their camouflaged green silk and bright, painted faces. He was almost bored enough to consider his precious idea of fighting the Unagi when a boomerang scythed through the nearby tree limbs and almost took his head off.

"What are you doing up there? You could get killed! These are _training_… Oh. It's you."

Naruto dropped down a few branches, crouching in the treetops.

"Hey, uh… Sokka, right?"

The boy nodded warily, which was a bit of an improvement on the yelling he had done the first time they met each other. The boomerang whizzed between them as an awkward silence fell. Finally, Sokka trudged over to pull it out of the ground, still keeping an eye on the younger boy.

"And you're… Naruko?"

"Naruto_, _yeah. Hey… whatcha' doin' out here?"

Sokka gestured around vaguely with his club, taking in the battered posts and the churned up earth of the clearing in one all-inclusive sweep.

"Just… y'know… training."

He threw the boomerang idly in no particular direction, and they both watched it spin away into the afternoon sun. Then Naruto turned back, smiling a big, white-toothed smile. It occurred to Sokka, with another touch of suspicion, that the boy had extremely sharp canines for a normal person.

"That girl with the fans…"

"Suki," said Sokka automatically, doing hid best to ignore the worried jolt in his stomach. _She's fine_, he reminded himself, and tried to resist the sudden urge to run back and check on her.

"She'll be fine," said Naruto, almost as though he knew the line Sokka's thoughts had followed. "Gaara told Temari not to injure her too badly, and she looks tough."

No matter how sure of yourself you were, it was nice to hear someone else's encouragement. Naruto grinned, nodding contemplatively at the slowly setting sun, opened his mouth to say something, then fell slowly over on his face as the boomerang hit him in the back of the skull.

* * *

Gaara rubbed his temples wearily, frowning at the two maps on the makeshift table of sand in front of him.

"That doesn't make any- why would-"

He scrawled a line of red around the borders of a large state on his own, roughly drawn map, then outlined a chunk of the earth nation, and scrawled a splattered symbol _fire_ in the middle.

"This is bizarre. The continent is almost the same- even the islands off the shore- but these lines are completely wrong. The only way to make this work, assuming that this is still the same world as when I laid down last night-"

He raised a hand to forestall Suki's outburst, finally consenting to raise his eyes from the pages in front of him.

"I know that it doesn't seem possible to you that there could be anything but the one world that you have always known. However, consider my position, if you will. I have lived fourteen years of my life knowing who and where I was- Gaara, the son of and eventual successor of the fourth Kazekage of the village that is hidden in the Sand. I died, and then I was alive again, and after the party that most of the village apparently attended, I slept for the first time in weeks and woke up in this place. You have no control of your chakra- most of you don't even know that it exists, and I don't know your techniques, or the methods that go into using them, even though they seem to be common knowledge."

He rested his head on his hand, ignoring the obvious confusion of the room's other occupant.

"This is a time for minds more open than my own."

Suki stared at the tousled red head, letting the speech sink in and absorbing information like any good warrior should. '_Slept for the first time in weeks…'_ the dark rings around the boy's eyes could have been looked at as the shadows of extreme exhaustion, but only at the utmost stretch of believability. Surely no one could stay awake long enough to get _that_ tired- the human body would collapse first. '_I _died, _and then I was alive again_?" She had absolutely no idea what that might mean, unless… _unless he really is from another world_._ A world where they can… bring people back._ But that, she repeated to herself, was completely impossible. The only other world she had _ever_ heard of was the spirit world, and these people were all too human to be spirits. Even if they _were _from another world, who or what had brought them here, and why? This 'Gaara' boy seemed to be just as confused as she was- albeit in a very formal, diplomatic way, so there was only one person who could _possibly_ help now.

Suki pulled herself upright, noticing with grim satisfaction that the pain in her head had died down.

Time to go see the Avatar.

* * *

Somewhere nearby, outside a small, well-furnished house on the border of the village, friendly violence is taking place…

"So you see in vibrations, then? Well, that explains a few things, ja."

_Feet pounding on the ground- he's coming in high and on the right._

"It's how I can tell when you're lying."

_Slide one foot out and bring one hand up, and the earth obeys in a roar of grinding stone._

"Lying? _Me_? How dare you. I'll have to kill you know, for the honor of my village."

Toph shot up a ten-foot pillar of earth, then growled as he turned what should have been a short, violent flight into a mid-air flip and a perfect landing.

"How do you _do _that? It's freakin' annoying! You're almost as bad as Twinkle-toes."

Kankuro raised one eyebrow, taken aback, and opened his mouth for the inevitable question, but Toph cut him off.

"Arrow kid. Aang. Whatever you call him. Twinkle-toes. He won't stand still and just take his butt-whooping like a man, the little sissy."

_Stones at the back of his head, silent and fast as a falcon-eagle…_

"And you're comparing me to him?"

_How does he see those _coming_? He's not blind, and he doesn't have eyes in the back of his head- WOAH!_

"Yeah. Why?"

_Too busy thinking about that and you won't be able to watch him. See how close he got?_

"So… I'm a sissy, ja."

_Match over, and we both know it. He wins this round._

"See? I'm sure you feel much better for admitting it. Heck, you even rode on Appa, and you're still nervous around him. _Don't_ lie and say you're not. I don't like riding on the big fluffy monster any more than the first time I tried it, but _you_," she punched him on the arm casually, almost knocking him over. "-are scared of him."

"Scared' is not the word I would use- I just don't like being to close to things that can accidentally crush me. It would be useful for long trips, I can see that."

"_Him_, not 'it'. Yeah- I didn't know how much we depended on him until I tried crossing the earth kingdom on foot."

"Isn't that the huge continent with all the mountains?" Kankuro frowned at her, still rubbing his sore arm. "Why on earth would you poor, chakra-deprived people do that? I mean- _we_ could do it, easily, but…"

A slightly uncomfortable silence stretched for slightly too long before Toph said, in a voice of not-quite anger, something too low to make out.

"What?"

"…got stolen," said Toph, and, without warning, twisted her foot sharply and made a quick, snapping hand motion. The ground under Kankuro's feet spun like water, sucking him under up to the knees. Toph grinned at him, now on her eye-level, a hint of danger in her smile.

"…by sandbenders."

Kankuro didn't move, letting his head loll limply forward onto his chest, thick brown hair hiding his eyes from view. Toph frowned behind her own thick curtain of coarse, black hair. Something was ever-so-slightly _wrong_ now. What had changed?

"You don't say."

"I'm not blaming you, but you can understand why some of us are-"

"-hostile? Edgy?"

A pair of black eyes was suddenly hovering three inches from her own, unseeing pair, rolling in a head completely separate from the motionless, slumped body in front of her. She blinked once or twice, then waved a hand over the empty shoulders, raising one eyebrow and completely ignoring the grotesque, three-eyed face in front of her.

"Your head is gone," she said matter-of-factly, and pulled the puppet out of the immovable stone with barely an effort. It clattered onto the ground and a blade jolted free of its wood and wire socket, drawing abstract lines across the dirt as the arm settled to the ground. Then the puppet twitched, limbs clattering, and spun away into the sky, answering some invisible summons.

"_You,_" said Kankuro's voice, "-are no fun, ja. That works perfectly well on everyone else."

"What works on everyone else?"

"There's a head about… hmmm… about four inches or so in front of you, at head height. Take a look."

Toph reached out carefully, winding her fingers gingerly through Karasu's thick, shaggy mane of hair. She raised her eyebrows, but didn't say anything, releasing the head rather hastily back into the air.

"How is that thing floating? I didn't feel any wires or strings."

"I'm controlling it. That water-girl, she calls it Bloodbending, although I think that's a rather macabre way of putting it…"

"Where _are_ you? I can't see you."

"Well, I thought I was jumping into the trees, but I seem to have found your bison… thing."

A vibration rippled through Toph's bones as the ninja's feet touched earth, mapping him out in dull shapes and bright lines. Internally, as she always did, she breathed a sigh of relief- it was disconcerting to have someone near you that you couldn't see.

"So," said the voice as a head reappeared on the killing machine in front of her, "Tell me more about sandbenders."

* * *

The sun had already started to set when _it_ happened. At almost the exact same moment, three people across the island stopped in mid-word or action and ran, homing in on one point. Almost as if they were following some signal or secret map. Of course, one didn't _hav_e to have a secret map when one could follow the huge pillar of blue-white light that eclipsed the early moon.

They weren't the only ones that saw. By the time Naruto reached them, nursing a large lump on the back of his head, Suki and Gaara were already running, ignoring the sounds behind them as Sokka tripped over things in the falling dusk. Kankuro joined them silently, the black clothes he'd requested blending with the deep shadows of the forest. Suki barely had time to realize that he had fallen into a position just behind and to the right of his brother- a regimented, but incomplete military formation- when the trees opened out to a wide clearing, with two figures sitting in it.

Temari was sitting against a tree, her posture flawless, her eyes closed, her face tense and drawn, apparently in deep meditation. And across from her… Across from her, the Avatar sat, straight-backed and rigid, his tattoos and his eyes shining out like dying stars with the now fading frosty light that had blazed so brightly moments before.

"Temari!"

The girl opened her eyes slowly, and then sat up quickly, her expression one of surprise and anger. But although her eyes traveled over them, the look didn't seem to be directed towards her brothers, or even at Suki. She took in the entire scene through half shut, hooded eyes, the she stood with difficulty, strode unsteadily over to Aang's glowing form, and dragged him to his feet by one ear.

"_CONTROL_!"

The glow flickered and vanished, and Aang struggled weakly as Temari's fingernails dug into the delicate skin of his earlobe, panting as though he had just run several miles.

"I'm _trying_! It's not as easy to ignore-"

"A wind ninja never makes excuses for his own failure, and I don't care if you weren't a ninja before, you are one now! Your control is decreasing as we go on- that flare of chakra was even visible from a distance! Down and do pushups! GO! I want to see your nose touch the ground, hold for five, back up all the way, and down again till your nose touches the ground!"

Suki gaped as Temari proceeded to circle the bridge between the human and spirit worlds as he got down doing pushups, and lecturing him about 'pansy pushups' and warning him not to 'stick your butt in the air like that- that's the easy way out!'

"She- she can't _possibly_ be- that boy is the-"

"She actually agreed to train someone? Wow, ja."

Suki stared from Kankuro to Temari as the former watched events unfold with obvious amusement. She turned to Gaara- the only one of them she'd met that could actually be called _sane_- only to see him nodding contemplatively, the slightest trace of a grin twitching the corners of his mouth.

"He will not have this easy. On the other hand, he is similar, I think at some times, to Naruto. Perhaps he will learn best following her method of training. Do you remember, Kankuro, that group of genin kunoichi who wanted to learn from her? The ones that ran away after a few hours, sobbing, screaming that they wanted to quit?"

"Oh yeah. Then they gave us one look and bolted."

"It's your face-paint, nii-san. I'm sure they wouldn't be nearly so frightened of you if you would consent to do without it when you were off duty…"

Suki listened absentmindedly as the conversation rambled on to places and people and events she had never heard of, while the blond woman in front of her sat the Avatar down again with a few stern orders and a ringing cuff to the crown of his bald head. _What _exactly she wanted was a mystery to Suki, but whatever it was, the Avatar wasn't achieving it. He was sweating, his arms shaking, and- most worrying of all, in her mind- his tattoos flickered on and off with that strange, celestial light.

She could see the other ninjas sitting around the clearing like silent sentinels, and as the last ray of the sun his the face of the blonde boy, she thought she was something strange flicker in their depths. There was sympathy, and a trace of a smile in the tan lines of his face. And- _it must have been a trick of the light, surely-_ for a splinter of a second the dying sunlight painted his eyes with a bloody red. And her mind rang with the theories and the complicated, spiraling logic and the one, strange, unthinkable theory that had loomed out of the mist…

"_Suki_!"

Sokka's voice jolted her out of her contemplative trance as her not-officially-boyfriend threw his arms around her neck and planted a hasty kiss on her cheek.

"You're okay now? No broken bones, no bruises, no-"

"Calm, Sokka. '_The warrior without turmoil within will be sheltered within turmoil without_', remember?"

"Uh… Suki?"

Sokka, no longer listening for the wisdom imparted, jabbed a finger at the clearing, where Aang was being yelled at for the third time since the blaze of light.

"What are they doing?"

Suki shrugged as Aang gingerly took Temari's fan from her hands, opened it till it showed one rich, violet circle, and swung it awkwardly. Then he fell over as the weight of the swing spun him out of control and over balanced him. Temari shook her head, grabbed the fan, and flicked it open like Suki would with her dual fans, showing three purple marks. Then she heaved a swing that sent gale-force winds ricocheting off trees and left deep, long slashes in the surrounding forest.

"Get as much practice as you can with that," she said finally, dumping her huge, black metal tessen next to Aang's limp form. "We're leaving soon, and it's easiest to do this on solid ground. I expect you to be exhausted in the morning."

"Mzstnw," growled the boy, and rolled, with an effort, onto his back.

"Ex-_cuse_ me?"

"'M 'zausted _now_," repeated Aang, still lying as still as possible and only moving his lips. Even them he tried not to move, and the result was a strange kind of mumbling groan.

"…ma'am," he added as a hurried afterthought, then flinched, obviously expecting more pushups or more crunches to do before he started on the giant war fan. Then;

"What do you mean… 'leaving soon'?"

* * *

**Darthgamer, Cheerleader16, and Golden Mean: Thankyou very much! Yes, I want as many awesome clashes as possible, so everyone may be a little tetchy in order to acheive this goal. XD I was thinking of a couple of fights that absolutely _have _to happen when I started this entire thing. (Do the words 'Neji vs. Tai Lee' sound good to you? How about Azula vs. Sasuke?)**

**Rena the pirate jedi wizard: I am glad to be of service, dear reader. *bows* I can certainly respect NaruHina, and if it feels right with the story in my head, it could end up that way. :) I am swayed by reviews... _coughhintcough..._**

**PennyArcadeFan2: Actually, that was all because I needed to let my main characters sit for a while! It's amazing how laziness can turn into something worth commenting over, ne? But thank you for the review- comments are the things that keep me writing. XD**

**Helkat: No, that's not everyone- I probably shouldn't have used quite so many characters, but it all got a little out of control... O_o... Introducing new characters is probably my second favorite bit of writing this story, though (my favorite bit, of course, is reading the reviews) so I don't mind too much. thank you for commenting!**

**Sandshinobi00: I too was sad for the end of Avatar. But, on the other hand, it had the White Lotus club in it, so who am I to complain? I'm glad to be supporting you through this time of crisus- all I ask is your forgiveness for the lateness of my updates.**

**pinkchocolate28m: Found it! His name is Arnook. Thank you muchly for the tip, and Sakura says 'thanks for your sympathy'. Neji's just glaring, so you'd probably better start backing away about now...**

**Much love for all my reviewers, because in my book, a review qualifies you for sheer awesome, and this is the Curious Vortex, signing off.**

**-C.V.**


	9. Chapter 7: Theory and Adventure

**AAGH! I took a hideously long time with this one! On the other hand, this chapter catches us up on a ton of characters that people have been asking me about, so there's at least one miniscule upside, ne? In this chapter, Shikamaru has a theory. A fairly important theory. The theory, in fact, that brought about this entire story. So. **

** I'm truly sorry about the time of updates. I would like to blame it all on projects and things that need done (which is partly true...), but I also have to face the fact that most of it was me being a lazy bum, so... please forgive me? And even more important, please enjoy the chapter! And review. :) They make me really, truly happy, and I look forward to reading every single one that I see in my inbox, even if I can't reply to all of them.**

**This dedicated as a late birthday present to DSPR7, who made me a sweet OP AMV for my birthday. Rock on, you obese chicken you. :D  
**

** Hobey-Ho, CV  
**

* * *

Chapter 7: Theory and Adventure

"Chouji," said Shikamaru contemplatively, "I need to test out your reaction to my theory. Please try to recieve this idea as though it wasn't me who thought of it."

Chouji nodded and took another enormous bite of a slightly squishy leg of cold meat.

"I think, since no other options are presenting themselves, that we are in the past."

Silence. Birds chirped. Chouji swallowed slowly, staring straight ahead, and then turned to his friend with wide, dazed eyes.

"Wh… the p… Huh?"

"Yes," said the genius, "that's what I thought too. But it would make sense, you must admit."

"I don't have to admit - in the…" Chouji stopped, meeting his friend's level, black eyes, then took a deep breath and started again. "How do you know?"

"Hmm… I don't. I'm probably completely wrong. However, unlike the 'separate universe' theory and assuming that are still in the same world as the one I went to sleep in, which is fairly likely, that's the best I can come up with." He took a last deliberate mouthful of rich stew and chewed slowly, apparently unfazed by his own horrifying conclusion.

"Can you get us back?"

"Not yet. I'll think as we go." Shikamaru stood up reluctantly, stretching luxuriously and giving a cavernous yawn. "We should get moving." He bent his legs experimentally, feeling out his chakra strength and analyzing his power.

"What, now? Breakfast…"

"Eat on the run. It's always worked before." Shikamaru noticed his friend's reluctant expression and sighed. "I would like concrete evidence whether this theory is absolutely ridiculous or actually plausible, and the faster I get it the faster I can start formulating a plan to get us out of here. Now, if you want to stay behind, I'll leave marks for you to follow, but I would rather not have to stop every few minutes, alright?"

Chouji stood up and slung the bag over his shoulder, ignoring the savory smells still wafting from the now-cold bag of food, and jumped heavily up into the trees. There was a few seconds of confused motion, and then a subdued voice said "Ow..."

"Looks like wherever we are," said Shikamaru wryly, "the trees are pretty flimsy. Most of the trees in the forest around Konoha can even support old man Choza, and he's bigger than you by a long shot. Ah well. On the ground then."

They set off, one still in his dirty fire-nation underclothes, the other in rough Earth greens and browns, vanishing with superhuman speed into the distance.

---

Uchiha Sasuke allowed himself to be escorted down a long hallway full of polished metal and woven tapestries, taking in with impassive eyes the symbol of flames that flared on almost every surface. Apparently a demonstration of the Great Fireball technique was enough to get him marked as some kind of amazingly talented misplaced noble and earn him a profuse apology.

"-and if you will just come this way sir, we will take steps to find your family. Please, make yourself at home."

Sasuke gave the man a contemptuous look and shut the door behind him, waiting for several seconds before moving. Finally, the guard's footsteps moved away and the boy began laying out his equipment on the floor in front of him, giving every possession a cursory once-over before moving on to the next object with practiced efficiency. His sword took the longest, its sheathe inspected and its blade probed with lighting-sparking fingertips before he finally placed it carefully on the top of the pile and picking up a robe with a snake embroidered on the back. He discarded it, sneering.

Someone knocked carefully on the door, and, when the only answer was silence, carefully pushed it open. The servant found a perfectly clean room, as though the mysterious young nobleman had sat down the moment he came in and hadn't moved since. The sharp black eyes watched his every move with a snake-like keenness--and unnerving chill on the back of his neck as he laid a folded suit of clothes on the bed and bowed out, doing his best not to look too threatening—you never knew whether a nobleman would interpret something as a deliberate offense or an assassination attempt.

Sasuke glared at the door, then contemplated the new clothes. He had seen other people in this palace, and they certainly did not dress in the strange, open-fronted shirts that Orochimaru had always given him. Camouflage, that was important, although he was sure that he could take on anyone in this huge, baffling place with both hands tied behind his back. Blending in with the surroundings. If they thought he was a nobleman, a nobleman he would be, and he would attempt to ascertain where he was and where, in all this mess, his enemies were.

Sasuke, not given over-much to the habit of talking to himself, chose instead to give a small, self-satisfied smile. The sheathe of his sword thumping against the backs of his legs, a smoke-bomb up each sleeve, Sasuke set off into the maze of elaborately decorated corridors. Any guards he met instantly stepped out of his way as the Uchiha's sharp, black eyes scrutinized them with mild disgust, and others in noble robes avoided him as he strode purposefully through the palace.

Somewhere in this mysterious place there was a source of new power, and he was going to find it.

---

In a small cell, in a biggish village, in a (by now) large country known as the Fire Nation, a boy with strange eyes sat and glared out at the people who thought he was a freak.

Kiba had quelled the urge to snarl at the people outside when it occurred to his observers that maybe it was actually a demon or something and a little boy had thrown him a slice of raw meat. He hadn't thought it was possible to be more cramped than he had been in the holding cell he'd started in, but this certainly qualified.

…Oh well, thought Kiba, at least Akamaru's in here too. But if he stopped to think about it, that made him angry too. How dare they cage up his dog—his best friend, his most trusted teammate? As though he had sensed his master's mood, Akamaru nuzzled his hand and whined, earning himself a reassuring fanged grin and a fond scratch under the chin.

"Look mommy, the demon-boy has a doggy friend!"

Kiba ground his teeth, the moment of peace gone again as the mother said something about 'strange spirits' and hurried her daughter away. This was humiliating enough without the constant reminder of his spectators. If he'd had the room he would have blasted this place flat by now, but this place would be impossible to start a good spin in, even without the horribly old-fashioned shackle around one ankle—for the first time in a long time, Kiba glared at a wall and closed himself off to meditate.

His attention was abruptly brought back to the real world by a heavy rumble in the ground. Around him, earth shifted and filled his nose with the smell of dead, sandy soil—honestly, did they really believe that crap about demons from some 'spirit world' tainting their land? Talk about superstitious… At any rate, if he was a demon, he wouldn't go back and ask his demon boss to stop anyway. Serve them right for humiliating a member of the Inuzuka family.

The boy tried to look on the bright side. They would have to give him some space some time, and when they did he would plow this miserable little shed to the ground.

… On second thought, 'some time' was too far in the future. They would give him space or he would make them give him space. Although that hammering that had gone on after they put him in here didn't sound good.

Kiba was ticked. He was ticked and tired and hungry for something other than raw meat, which wasn't that good at the best of times, let alone when what he really wanted was a big, juicy piece of cooked meat and a loaf of fresh, hot bread slathered in butter. He was also without soldier pills and in serious danger of losing his temper completely and just attacking the wall until either he or it broke.

Another growl from the earth—something didn't feel right. Kiba ignored the gasps and walked forwards as far as possible, leaning forward to look through the hastily set bars, slit pupils obvious in wide, tired eyes.

"Akamaru. C'mere boy."

Another mutter of nervous voices rippled through the crowd as the huge white dog padded quietly up to the bars, sticking his nose through to sniff the air. He made a strange growling sound—too like human speech to go without notice—and curled up with a leisurely stretch. Obviously the mysterious disturbance wasn't too dangerous at the moment.

Content with the consistently trustworthy animal instincts of his companion, Kiba curled up next to the warm furry body and, with nothing else to do, tried to sleep.

---

Neji was being a moron again. Of course, he would have been extremely insulted if you told him that, so Sakura decided not to bother. It wasn't worth the affronted glares.

The man who'd introduced himself as 'Chief Arnook' was either an extremely good ninja (unlikely, even though a ninja at his age would have to be talented) or he was telling them nothing but the truth. That was an unusual quality to see- almost anyone would tell at least a few little white lies when mysterious kids appeared in front of their gates and started attacking their soldiers.

"We were recently under attack, as you can see," said Arnook, and Neji glowered at the men in blue who were painstakingly using suiton to reconstruct a wall. "But we defeated them." He gave Sakura a hint of a glance. "With the help of the Avatar."

Neji sneered. At this point he would have sneered at anything. This didn't seem to be received well by the fur-wearing men around them, and even Neji in a noble funk was still Hyuga Neji, one of the village prodigies. He wasn't stupid enough to provoke an unknown enemy that outnumbered them. He didn't stop sneering, but he did tone it down a little.

"Who is the Avatar, please?" said Hinata meekly. She was standing between her two companions, her face still pale from the cold she'd been exposed to, snow bleaching the color from her hair. She looked like a ghost, and from the way the men were looking at her, they thought the same thing.

"Who is the Avatar?" said the dangerous-looking old man incredulously, and Hinata turned red as all eyes turned to her.

"I j-just wondered," she mumbled into her fur collar. "I'm sorry."

"That's... um... that's alright," said Arnook slowly. "How did you find yourself outside our gates, may I ask?"

"I just went to sleep last night," said Hinata, looking bewildered. "Why?"

"I was reading and fell asleep on top of my book," said Sakura contemplatively. "Good thing I was still wearing my shoes."

"I," said Neji, and Sakura groaned inwardly at the pure superiority dripping off the single word, "-was training."

"And you collapsed?"

"No," said the Hyuga frostily, but Sakura was used to staring down cantankerous patients by now, and even the penetrating glare of the Byakugan couldn't cause her too much discomfort.

The five men exchanged glances. Obviously they were all thinking the same thing, and the ninja didn't know what it was--not a good situation. They didn't seem to be attacking though, so presumably it couldn't be too bad. Or they were waiting for them to drop their guard. One of the two.

"I must admit, it does not sit well with me to admit three people who could cause so much damage to trained waterbenders," said the chief slowly, as though he was making a decision as he spoke, "but I don't think you will attack again unless we attack first, correct?"

Hinata nodded, looking to the other two to make sure. Her cousin said nothing. Sakura smiled encouragingly.

"We aren't here to make war," said Hinata quietly, "and we're as confused as you are. More confused, I w-would think."

Arnook smiled at them comfortingly, then gestured to the sharp-eyed old man to their right. "Master Pakku, if you will escort these three to a guest house?" It was a request, not an order-- the old man was obviously held in high respect. "I need to reassure the people that we are not under attack."

He nodded to the guards, who respectfully inclined their heads, their eyes still fixed on the three ninja. Master Pakku frowned at them skeptically, then jerked his head sharply to the right, leading them down a gleaming, icy alley-way.

There was silence as they walked, although Sakura could tell that Hinata was in awe and even Neji, who had grown up around the stately buildings and reserved wealth of the Hyuuga compound, was secretly impressed. They passed glittering fountains and hundreds of silvery buildings before, finally, the stopped in front of a derelict building near the top of the mountainous city. Sakura stared up at the smashed crater in the ceiling, taking in the piled snow and slabs of shattered ice. Something had destroyed this building, and they were expected to stay in it?

She was about to appeal to the old man (for her patient's sake, more than anything) for a better resting place, when he suddenly slid into a firm, practiced stance, raising his hands in front of him. Sakura felt an inexplicable thrill of foreboding, shuffling backwards warily as Pakku took a deep breath, letting it out slowly as he closed his eyes.

The other guards backed away together, their eyes fixed on the man as he slowly lifted his hands, and Neji's own hands twitched to their Jyuuken position. Hinata edged towards the other two ninja, putting her shoulder to Neji's in an awkward defensive formation as the ice beneath their feet rippled--a miniature quake.

Then, with a long exhale, the old man made a complex, twisting motion that traveled from his hands all the way up his arms and carried into a slow, deliberate spin. The house...

...the house rebuilt itself from the foundations up. Walls that had been reduced to a slick mess of ice and crumbled snow fountained up into sturdy constructions of the silvery, sculpted substance as the other beautiful houses on the street. A sculpted moon with flowing waves curving away from it sank into the wall above the door, making the house that had until so recently been uninhabitable exactly like every other house bordering the empty alley-way.

Pakku brought his hands around in a smooth gesture that stated, quite plainly, that he was finished doing... whatever he had done, and gave another of his abrupt, impatient motions, beckoning the three ninja forward.

"This," he said, his sharp voice echoing off the gleaming walls around them, "will be your temporary lodgings. Complaints?" The last word carried the definite feeling that anyone brave (or stupid) enough to have complaints might end up sleeping outside. The inquiry was met with blank faces and shaking heads. Pakku gave a dry half-smile, apparently amused at their compliance, and, without another word, turned on his heel and strode away.

"Th...thank... you? Um... Thank you!" the old man raised a hand to shoulder height and made a small waving gesture of dismissal in Sakura's general direction. The other two blue-clothed warriors hurriedly filed in behind him, and Neji made a tiny, supremely annoying 'hmph' sound in the back of his throat, just loud enough for the men to hear. If they noticed or cared, they didn't show it--the mysterious men vanished around a bend in the road and were gone.

The three Konoha shinobi stood in front of their new lodgings in silence for almost a minute before, finally, Hinata turned without a word and walked slowly through the open door. Neji proceeded to follow, giving the impression that he had always known she was going to do that but he had wanted to give her the satisfaction of going first. Finally, after one more long look at the gray, overcast sky and the looming wall of the city, Sakura followed.

---

"You are under arrest for illegal earth-bending! Don't move--we will not hesitate to fire!"

The boy in green stared around the circle of hostile faces, his hands still smeared with mud from the huge, smashed boulder that stood next to him.

"Excuse me, but what-"

"Don't talk either!" barked the commander, his voice amplified by nervous authority, "You are under arrest!"

"You have fire jutsu? Am I near the land of fire, then? Thank goodness!" The boy, ignoring the six fists aimed straight for his heart, bowed deeply. Then he stood up and threw out a fist, one thumb pointed to the sky, his teeth gleaming brilliantly in the sunlight. "I must report to the Hokag-"

Six jets of brilliant fire shot from six fists, colliding exactly on the spot where the boy was standing.

The flames cleared almost instantaneously, leaving nothing behind.

"Whoa," said one of the smallest soldiers, and was given a cuff that made his helmet ring for dropping formation.

"We didn't fire that much force," muttered the commander, "split up, and-"

"I see!" said a zealous voice from behind the line of men, and the boy in green pulled himself to his feet, standing on top of the boulder. "You have stolen katon techniques, and are masquerading as ninja of the land of fire!"

"Wha-?" said one of the men, then dropped to the ground, his helmet dented by a blow too fast to see.

"I am the green beast of Konoha!" said Rock Lee, "And I will defeat you all in the name of the Hokage, or I will cross this country in a week!"

The self-proclaimed 'green beast' paused a second, his arms still in his youthful fighting stance, looking thoughtful. "...backwards." he added as an afterthought, and vanished in a blur.

They knew what hit them, but they never saw it.

After the last unconscious body hit the ground, Lee took a moment to catch his breath--wrenching tree roots out of the ground with your bare hands and then knocking people out at faster-than-sight speeds has a tendency to take it out of you--and bowed to his oblivious opponents.

"It was an inevitable end, but I honor your mastery of the Fire techniques."

He looked around the deserted clearing that he had been using to regain his strength and sighed regretfully.

"Obviously I have to move on from here as well. A pity, but... the movement will do me good. I am lacking in youthful vigor, to have taken down the enemy in such a long period of time! GUY-SENSEI! I will train five times harder to repair the damage from my lack of diligence!"

The ground splintering around his feet from the stress of his speed, Lee set off into the forest, searching for another deserted clearing with trees in it that were sturdy enough for his training.

---

Shikamaru wandered around the market and felt conspicuous. Chouji was somewhere else, looking for some way of acquiring money that didn't involve stealing from people, and were did that leave him?

...in the middle of a crowded market full of people who didn't like him, apparently. He was being jostled by every person he passed, and his feet would be covered in nasty bruises if he wasn't still wearing his uncomfortable steel boots. He had gotten more than a few looks, too--okay, glares, actually--even though all he was doing was standing there.

He had just sat down, and was idly wondering why the land of Fire was so hated in this place (whether it was the past or not, some things had stayed the same, and the separate lands seemed to be one of them) when his wandering eyes caught an irregularity in the ebb and flow of the crowd. They seemed to be crowding around something, although another man in the same red armor that Shikamaru had recently discarded had a large circle of clear space to himself. He looked edgy, and the ninja didn't blame him--the men on either side of him were huge and carrying farming tools over their shoulders, which looked rather more threatening in their calloused hands.

The Konoha ninja sighed heavily and leaned his head back against the wall he was sitting next to. He really, really didn't want to move from his spot by the wall... the clouds were open above him through a break in the houses and he had almost figured out how to take off the boots (the last remnant of his armor, and most of the reason that he had been feeling so conspicuous), but knowledge was a vital commodity in an unknown territory, and he wanted to get out of this troublesome place as soon as possible.

...Well, maybe just a few more seconds...

"Rock Lee?" said a voice from the crowd.

Shikamaru didn't move, or not that someone casually watching him would have noticed. One of his eyelids twitched.

"He must be an Earthbender, then," murmured another voice--female, this time. "With a name like that. We should--"

"Sh!"

Shikamaru opened one eye slowly, and one fine, black eyebrow rose. Then the other. Then, with considerably more energy than an observer would have ever guessed he could muster, he scrambled hurriedly onto his feet and started towards the pillar.

The crowd, now finished with the initial rush of speculation and interest that was probably the outlying town's only entertainment, began to straggle away. Shikamaru pushed between people in the deceptively high-speed stroll that his mother hated so much, letting himself blend into the crowd like a shadow. It was a useful talent, even if there was no chakra involved--his father had taught him how it was always better, whenever you could, to use no techniques at all.

"Move, boy," growled the armored soldier, and shoved past him, his last poster hung. Shikamaru bowed his head like he always did when Ino was nagging and shuffled past. He had better get these troublesome boots off soon, before another loud 'fire nation' soldier tried to drag him back to the army. Honestly, they were worse than his mother. Sometimes. Sometimes, although the recruiting sergeant had a good, practiced bellow, he lacked the piercing edge that roused the Nara household every morning.

...maybe he could wait a little longer than he thought to get home.

Especially, he realized, since it would appear that he wasn't as alone as he'd thought. A round, shiny-haired and, above all, familiar face beamed out at him from an old-fashioned, inked wanted poster, and even with the hedge-like eyebrows and the enormous round eyes, you couldn't not recognize the face of Rock Lee. He could win an award for being the world's most conspicuous ninja (although the troublesome boy was ludicrously effective, the Nara had to admit).

"What's going on?" asked Choji's voice behind him. Then: "Oh..."

"Yes, 'oh," muttered Shikamaru. "Very much 'oh." He yawned, letting the new facts sink into his mind. "I think that 'work' thing is going to have to wait."

"And I'm sure you're upset," said Choji gravely. "Is there anyone else? Is Ino here?"

"I have absolutely no idea," said Shikamaru, managing to convey with only five words that he didn't particularly care, and that she could take care of herself. "Let's start at the beginning. Let's find more shinobi."

---

"I need to talk to someone," said Kiba, who probably wasn't aware how close his voice was to being a snarl, "-who isn't a superstitious moron, because I'm not just going to sit here while whatever-the-**** that was comes after me and my dog!"

"So save yourself, spirit!"

"Screw you," said Kiba bluntly. "Let. Me. Out!"

'Wuurf' said Akamaru, and went into a long string of growls and whimpers as the ground trembled again. Outside, people began to scatter into their houses, and someone in the distance yelled. Kiba, momentarily distracted, listened intently, then nodded thoughtfully.

"Can you even do that?"

For a dog, Akamaru managed a passable shrug. Outside, on the very edge of the limited view, fire shot up into the sky--more people screamed. Nothing ventured, nothing gained,said the nin-dog's body language. He stood carefully, making an obvious effort not to crush his master into a wall, and looked at him, waiting for the go-ahead.

"Well..."

Inuzuka Kiba was not, by nature, a cautious person. He had very few reasons to be, most of the time--the Inuzuka way of fighting being a simple process of throwing oneself violently at the enemy--but there was one thing that might make him stop and think first, and that was a risk for his beloved dog. But now that Akamaru was the size of a small pony and had teeth that could crush bone, Kiba found himself saying, more and more, three words;

"Go for it!"

Outside, the street was completely deserted. Kiba could smell the people, standing by their windows and doors, worried and anxious--whatever was coming their way, it was something dangerous. He turned to Akamaru, but the dog was sitting with his back to his partner, his nose against the metal bars. A gentle of shiver of chakra ran through the air, then the dog leaned forwards, took the bars in his teeth, and bit down hard, jerking his head like a hunting dog breaking its prey's back.

With a scraping, grinding screee of tortured metal that set Kiba's teeth on edge, the bars warped and bent as Akamaru's tore his way through them, leaving tendrils--ones that only an Inuzuka could have smelled or recognized--of the musky, spicy smell of a ninja dog's chakra. One more chakra-enhanced bite and the great, white dog was outside the bars, shaking his fur and stretching his legs in the fresh air. Kiba made to follow his partner, then stopped as metal clinked. He growled a swear word and turned, halfway through the hole in the metal, to see the shackle still on his ankle, dug deeply into the stony ground.

Akamaru made an inquisitive, anxious noise and nosed at his face, but Kiba waved him away, ducking reluctantly back into the cramped structure. The dog stuck his head in, growling.

"No, no," muttered Kiba, as though his partner had spoken a perfectly understandable sentence, "This shouldn't take too long..."

He laid the chain across his lap, forming a hand-sign almost absent-mindedly. Then he opened his mouth and grinned, and his teeth were long and wolf-sharp. He couldn't seem to say anything through his newly enhanced fangs, but he made a muffled sound that was almost like an evil chuckle, then picked up the chain and bit.

There was a clatter of metal as the end of the chain not fastened to his ankle dropped onto the ground, the severed end jagged and clearly marked with deep tooth-marks. The chakra dissapated. Kiba let out a heavy breath as his teeth shrank back to their regular size, vanishing into his gums with a few winces from their owner.

"That's hard, huh? Okay, let's get the--"

There was a terrified squeak from the street outside, and a little girl slowly started to creep behind a door-frame, staring at him with enormous, fearful eyes. The two looked at each other for a few seconds, frozen, then Kiba bared his teeth a little.

"Boo."

The girl shrieked and hid completely, running into her house and slamming the door behind her. Kiba grinned, ignoring the corner of his brain that felt ashamed, and stretched his arms and legs, enjoying the fresh air and the new scents.

"Come on, Akamaru," said the newly appointed wolf spirit of the town, and grinned a grin full of fangs. "Let's get out of here."

* * *

**Ahahaha! Kiba! You're mythical!**

**Ahem... anyway...**

** DSPR7: I have nothing to say to you, wierdo. XD Nothing but 'thanks for reading', I suppose.**

**SWGLESSIUT: I'm going to avoid that set of pairings as much as possible until Kishimoto-sensei gives us a little more proof one way or the other, I think. He's really made it hard for us mostly undecided people to write stories. :P Thanks for reading!**

**GreatBigCranberries: Question answered! There ya' go. Thanks for your review, and I hope you don't mind the wait too awfully much...**

**MadnessLover: Thanks!**

**CaramelTromboneGirl: I intend to. Unless I actually post a chapter or something stating that the story is no longer in progress, then it is still being written, so don't give up hope!**

**Bane-Treller: Yay, you reviewed! I love reviews! Thanks for yours. :D**

**PennyArcadeFan2: *bow* Thank you very much, reader--I bask in the reveiwer's attention. :) I'm sorry my breaks are so long... *sniff***

**darkf0x: I'm glad everyone is IC and well, especially since Gaara is one of my favorite characters as well. There's your Kiba for you, although I'm sorry I didn't see your idea before I got to writing him. XD He may rampage yet.**

**Pen-Name-Kitsune-Chan: Many thanks. Until all these people form into little consolidated groups, It's going to follow the Gaang and the other people in alternations, so i hope to avoid overcrowding as much as possible. This is also one of the reasons that I'm trying not to bring the Akatsuki or any ninja outside the Chuunin Exams group into all this. Kyuubi is probably going to rear its ugly head at least once, but I don't know when yet, since i'm literally thinking up this story as I go along. XD Please continue reviewing, although I have to admit that the slow updates are mostly due to my laziness, not my carefullness. *kowtows* sorry...**

**SandShinobi00: Is this satisfactory? Please? :) I intended to make it a little longer, but one of my sisters is lobbying for this computer, so I didn't really have time. I hope you like it anyway, right?**

**The Spirit Alchemist: I'll certainly try.**

**pinkchocolate28m: And now you'll probably have to wait for a good long time for the next one--sorry. But I'm glad to know that there are other procrastinators out there in the world, right? And yeah, Neji is a little tetchy right now. I would back away too! :)**

**GozenV: Sakura showed because people kept asking about her. More people seem to turn up every chapter, strangely enough... **

**Okay, this is how it stands, in the order that I introduced them in the prologue:**

**Lee, Hinata and Neji, Shikamaru, Gaara and Kankuro, Kiba, Temari, Shoji, Sasuke, Naruto. I always saw Gaara as having blue-green eyes, but maybe that's just because of the video-cleaner that I get my videos from... why what color of eyes do you think he has? And you're right, I have trouble writing Naruto as a mature person. XD It's one of my fatal Naruto-writing flaws.**

**darthgamer: Not soon, but it _is_ an update, yeah? Sorry about the timing, once again. :)  
**


	10. Chapter 8: Bump in the Night

**Lord, I am **_**so frakking lazy**_**! I should time these chapters-this is getting ridiculous. Anyway...**

**Chapter. See below. I would like to implore you; if you favorite me or put me on watch or something, at least leave a review telling me **_**something**_**. I love reviews. They're the first thing I look for when my inbox tells me I have emails, and I tend to get vaguely depressed if I don't get any. To all those who review faithfully (and I know you're out there-I can hear you breathing) thank you very much. XD**

**Pleading done with... enjoy the show.**

Chapter 8: Bump in the Night

"Remind me again," said Sokka, in a completely rational, much-too-calm-to-be-true tone of voice, "why it's more important to get you to your ninji buddies instead of _finding a master so Aang can defeat the most despicable man alive?_"

"Nin-_ja_'," corrected Naruto, "and... I dunno. I don't think anyone ever said you guys had to take us anywhere, actually."

"We couldn't just leave them on the island," pointed out Katara, and then leaned backwards as her brother made a violently fed-up and expansive gesture-apparently unable to get across his feelings in words. "-Are you okay, Sokka?"

"Fine!" Snapped Sokka. "Absolutely fine!"

"We'll still have time," mumbled Toph lazily, then moved her feet and almost kicked Gaara. "The only thing _I'm_ worried about is the fuzzy guy here."  
Gaara, unable to raise an eyebrow, settled instead for a skeptical glance, then seemed to remember Toph's blindness and abandoned the expression for his usual blank mask.

"_Fuzzy_ guy. Shall I assume that you are not referring to me in this instance?"

"I think she means Appa!" called Aang from his seat on the bison's head, "he's never had to carry all these people before, have you buddy?"  
Appa gave a rumbling growl of agreement, sending vibrations through his passenger's bones and the make-shift saddle that Gaara had fastened to the sky-bison's back. Toph sat up abruptly; her fingers sinking into the rock-hard sand as though it was liquid, then lay calmly back down again with an effort, still keeping a firm grip on the sand. Temari, despite being new to the sky-bison experience, didn't look tense at all-quite on the contrary, she looked at least as comfortable as Aang and his friends, hanging over the side of the saddle to watch the sea passing under them. Kankuro was doing a fair job of not letting anyone see how he flinched every time Appa's tail jolted them, his eyes flickering nervously to his sister as she watched the horizon and the fast-approaching mainland.

There was a sudden _whoosh_ of displaced air, and Aang landed on the very tip of Appa's horn, balancing like a professional gymnast, grinning widely. Naruto stared, momentarily taken off guard, and then he grinned back eagerly, climbing to his feet. There was a quiet thump, a sudden lack of Naruto, and then the ninja was balanced on Appa's other horn. Aang forgot whatever it was he'd come back to say instantly, looking ecstatic.

"Are you an Airbender?"

Naruto stared at him blankly. "What?"

"Oh. Guess not then." Aang's face fell slightly, and then he dropped onto Appa's back, suspended in the air for an inhuman length of time. Naruto watched as he made a feather-light landing, his brilliant blue eyes narrowed slightly as though he was watching for something. Whatever he had been looking for didn't seem to be there-he sighed and gave a tiny shrug of disappointed indifference.

There were a few minutes of comfortable silence; Temari leaned over the side and looked out, Toph seemed to be asleep, and Gaara, to Naruto's vague interest, seemed to have built a 3-D map of the country in sand and was drawing careful lines in it with no obvious purpose. Then Aang, who'd been fidgeting ever since he sat down, cleared his throat loudly.

"So... um... where are you guys from?"

"Wind," said Kankuro, opening one lazy eye. "Sand. Why?"

Katara sat forward from her place next to Gaara, suddenly interested. "So you _are_ air nomads? Then how-"

"Nomads? No, not by a long shot."

There was another silence, confused this time, and then Gaara said "I do not believe be are understanding each other."

"Huh." Said Sokka, still blatantly miffed, and mumbled something that sounded very like '_suspicious_'. Katara shot him the universal sisterly look of exasperation, then frowned quizzically at the redhead, who stared blankly back, calm and polite as ever. Emotions flickered across her face-confusion, disbelief, curiosity, and then, at last, something like wonder.

"You... really don't know these things, do you?"

"Nope," called Temari, her voice muffled as it drifted up on the wind,"-I would just _love _it if you would explain, though."

"Where are you guys... actually from?"

That night, long after Appa had curled up outside the cave they were sheltering in and everyone was lying still and silent, Katara lay and stared at the ceiling, thinking. Next to her, in the patch of fitful moonlight that spilled over Appa's furry back through the opening of the cave, Aang's eyes were gleaming dimly gray-he wasn't asleep either.

"_Aang?_"

He rolled over to face her, and for a second the shadows on his face made him look years older than he was. Then he smiled, and the 12-year-old was back.

"Yeah? You're not tired either, huh?"

"Do you..." Katara hesitated, then continued, "do you think that we should be doing this?"

"Doing what?"

Silence. Katara bit her lip, not sure how to say what she was thinking-not even sure if she was thinking it or not.

"They can't be from where they said they're from. We'd have heard of secret... secret 'ninja' colonies or whatever they called them, right?"

"I guess so," said Aang, and rubbed his eyes blearily with the heels of his hands. "But... I trust them. I don't think they're lying."

The quiet came back, full of the gentle sound of the waves on the beach outside as both of them stared up at the rock ceiling and thought. Finally there was a gentle shifting a few feet away, and Toph glided serenely across the ground, still lying down, coming to a gentle rest next to the other two. The ground under her shivered once, rippling like water, then solidified again.

"They're not lying," said the blind girl, with absolute certainty. "They could be crazy, but they're not lying."

"You've never taught _me_ how to do that!" hissed Aang, serious business forgotten for the moment,"That gliding thing! You looked like a caterpillar-worm or something. How did you-"

"Aang. Focus."

"Sorry."

"I hate to sound too much like my brother," murmured Katara, glancing at Sokka's inelegantly sprawled, snoring figure, "but we _do _have a mission here. We can't hold off on defeating... well... _him_... just to carry around a few people who say they're ninjas."

"You don't add an 's' on the end," said Gaara. He was sitting between Aang and Katara on Appa's tail, hands folded in his lap, apparently listening with interest. Katara nearly screamed. She would swear the boy had already been asleep across the cave when she had lain down earlier.

"Yes," said the sand ninja, "I often get that response. I don't sleep." He traced the dark rings around his eyes with one finger, smiling ever-so-slightly.

"What, _never_?" Toph sat up, closing her eyes. "You don't _look _like someone who never sleeps. Not really."

"I have 'freaking weird eye-shadows'," Gaara informed her, with a hitch to his voice that may have meant that he was actually trying not laugh. "Or so I have heard. I suppose they wouldn't be visible, even to _your_ formidable hearing." The blind girl smirked at the word 'formidable', obviously pleased to have her talents recognized after spending so much time around people who took it for granted.

"They're not _really_ weird," Aang reassured him, "just a little... different-looking. I mean, I'm the guy with an arrow on his head, I guess, so I don't know if I'm allowed to say."

"I have seen things far stranger than children with arrows on their heads," said Gaara serenely. "Many of them within my own family. Incidentally, they were not lying. Most—if not all—of our story was true."

Katara wouldn't have admitted to blushing, if anyone had asked her later. "I wasn't saying you were lying, Gaara, I was just-"

"No, you assumed that we were insane. I do not blame you. I assumed the same thing of you for a few hours after we first met, after all."

Toph snickered.

"Hey, you had a map earlier, right?" Aang was sitting up now, all thoughts of sleep forgotten. "Can you get it out and show us where you live?"

Gaara nodded solemnly. "Yes... Yes, I think that would be best. I don't think that it will matter much, here and now." He beckoned gently with one hand and a thick snake of sand floated out of the darkness where he had been sleeping, coiling into a thick plate shape in front of him. He closed his eyes, folding his hands into a different shape-one that was deliberate and strange-and the sand began to grow and dip, splitting into an increasingly familiar shape.

"Ooo..." said Aang.

"What? What?" Toph waved a hand out in front of her until it came into contact with the floating continent, and then nodded, understanding. "Nice."

Gaara traced a finger to the Earth Kingdom, then ran his hands over the great desert. The sand melted into a blob and reformed into a close-up of the desert, full of miniature, rolling sand dunes. A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead, but he reached out again and touched the sand in the middle of the dunes.

"We were here," he said, and the golden grains rose up into a beautifully detailed miniature of what had to be an absolutely _enormous_ city. "A few nights ago, at least, before the entire world rearranged itself without my knowledge and dumped us on you."

He let the sand melt back into a blob and banished it back into the darkness with a gentle wave of one hand.

"I appreciate that you have an important task set before you-" he raised a hand as Katara opened her mouth to speak,"-and I won't ask what it is. You are making a great concession simply carrying us where we need to go. I have been remiss in thanking you."

He bowed, not awkward at all despite his sitting position, then straightened and frowned, as though remembering something annoying. "My brother would have a fit if he saw that. Don't tell him, please, or he'll be bothersome about it. He doesn't think I should have to be respectful to people anymore."

His eyes flickered to one side as some minuscule sound caught his attention, then smirked-an extremely unsettling expression, one that made him look younger and _much_ more like someone's little brother. Katara found herself wondering for a second, whether he had been lying about his 'position of authority'. He was certainly very young-probably only a little older than Aang.

"He's a bit of a fool politically, to tell you the truth," Gaara raised his voice ever-so-slightly. "And he snores, when he's actually asleep. As opposed to when he is... for example... spying on me." Somewhere in the back of the cave, blankets shifted.

"Trying to _sleep_ back here, ja!"

"I'm sure."

"Nn... Shut up, Gaara."

"What's going on? 'S it morning already? I was dreaming about Sakura-cha-"

"Guh! Firebenders! Get dow- oh. Oh man... It's still the middle of the night! Aang..."

"It wasn't me!"

"Gaara! I'm gonna kill you!"

"I did not do the waking. That was Kankuro-nii-san's fault. Lynch him."

"I think you're supposed to say that differently," murmured Katara, her energy almost visibly leaving her as the talking ended. "Shouldn't it be more like: 'lynch _him_,' not just...um... 'lynch him'?"

"Nah," mumbled Kankuro from his nest of blankets at the back of the cave, "Gaara doesn't like being spied on. That was an order."

From the entrance of the cave, Appa made an enormous, grunting, growling noise of complaint. Momo chittered and squeaked, as though chiding his companions for talking too loudly.

"Has the sun risen yet?" Asked Temari's voice grumpily. Her blanketed form rolled over, one hand reaching to her fan, and there was a definite feeling in the air that if the sun _hadn't_ risen, there would be blood. Aang crawled up one of Appa's broad, furry sides, poking his head out of the opening of the cave and vanishing into the dark, gray-blue patch of sky.

"No! The moon's setting though..."

Temari growled and sat up, pulling wiry strands of her hair back into their wayward ponytails. If she had stayed up all night, it didn't show in her face-although all faces away from the fading moonlight were pale blurs, she seemed to be completely awake.

"Are we moving, then? Nobody was asleep anyway."

"_I_ was asleep," mumbled Sokka.

"Nobody but the fool was asleep," continued Temari without pausing. Sokka looked for a second as though he meant to argue, but seemed to decide that there were more important things to do. He fell backwards onto his sleeping bag with a disgruntled sigh and snuggled his boomerang closer to his chest.

"I think your brother has the right idea," said Gaara quietly, "you should all get some sleep before we have to start tomorrow."

Temari nodded. Toph appeared to already have fallen asleep, although it was almost impossible to tell with her bangs in her eyes, and Katara tried to fight back a yawn as she realized just how _tired_ she really was, how comfortable her blankets were...

When Naruto woke up, Gaara was still sitting on the ground, watching the room in general with a blank, emotionless expression on his face. When he saw his friend looking at him, he nodded a greeting and stood, striding noiselessly over to crouch next to him.

"I am glad you're awake," he whispered, "I need to come with me." Naruto listened sleepily, frowning as the Kazekage explained.

"I guess so," he whispered finally, "-but I'm lousy at that, always have been."

Gaara shrugged and stood up, facing the huge mound of slumbering fur that was Appa. He frowned for a second, then, as smoothly as a gymnast, he leapt straight up into the air, catching the ceiling with both chakra-coated feet. As he reached the exit, he bent down as though going through a particularly low doorway and disappeared into the early morning light.  
Naruto got up carefully, without even a rustle of blankets, following his friend into the sun.

Toph dreamed that she was in a strange place where everyone kept jumping in the air, vanishing eerily out of 'sight', and every time they came down, they were different people. That was why, when she woke up and felt a stranger walking past her, she thought she was still dreaming. Then she felt the slowly-breathing forms of her friends around her, and Appa's bulk blocking the door, and she could tell that it wasn't a dream. Dreams never got little things, like the way a sleeping heart-beat slowed-this was real.

...which meant that that wandering stranger was... _also_ real.

Toph listened to the intruder's footsteps on bodies as it passed, and realized, suddenly, that it was walking _towards_ the exit. Whatever they'd stolen, whoever they'd seen, they were leaving with it now, and they couldn't afford for the world to know where they were.

To heck with sitting quietly and waiting. There was no way this person was here to-

And then Katara screamed, and the ground was a mess of echoes and ripples as the cave snapped into chaos.

Blood. There was so much blood.

That was all her mind registered for a second, before she realized that she'd already started screaming. The man in the black and red, cloud-covered robe just stood there in the middle of the cave, Silver-haired and smirking, his eyes glinting unnaturally lavender. He was standing brazenly in the middle of the cave, and he was holding...

...he was holding a bloody scythe in one hand, and behind him, three crimson-soaked bodies settled against the darkly splattered wall. She saw Naruto, his eyes still closed in mock-sleep, a bloody dent in his forehead., Aang's grey eyes rolled up in his head, scarlet dripping down his chin and Kankuro and Temari back to back, throats cut, wearing identical expressions of surprise. And Sokka, decapitated, crumpled on the ground, identifiable only by his blood-soaked blue furs.

Katara had one horrible, sickening moment to take all this in before, with a rush of movement that blurred in the fresh dawn light, every bender in the room attacked at once.

The man was gone, in a flicker that would be impossible for any normal human to replicate, and now he was behind Aang-

"_Kai._"

It felt like being doused in icy water. Aang yelped, then blinked as the others flickered back into view, all of them disheveled, tired, and shaken. Katara's scream choked off, the water she'd lashed out with spraying wildly in all directions as she lost control in her shock. The dark stains vanished as though they'd never been there. Toph scrambled not to fall into anyone, yelled as the cold splash of water hit her, and slammed a bare foot into the ground with enough force to rattle the solid stone of the walls.

Instantly, the movement stopped. The blind earthbender snapped her wrists downwards and the ground rumbled as it softened, sinking everyone but Toph into the earth up to their shoulders. In a split second the stone had hardened from quicksand to granite as fast as it had given way. Appa growled—a deafening noise in the enclosed space-and then there was just a long, panting silence.

Gaara, standing on the wall calmly, walked down it and onto the floor and stalked over to the door.

"Do not allow anyone to exit," he told Appa seriously, and got a steady, brown-eyed gaze in return. The sky-bison heaved himself onto his feet and shifted, blocking all but the faintest light from the outside. "Where are all of you? And I would like to warn you now-whoever you are-that you are not the only shinobi in this cave."

"...Really?"

There was another shudder in the ground, and everyone but the mysterious intruder was shot out of the earth, landing with varying amounts of grace on feet, all fours, or face. Appa shambled away from the cave entrance, and the rising sun glinted, fresh and cold, off of the trespasser's silver hair. The ninja moved forward slightly, cutting the others out of a slowly tightening circle, hands on weapons.

"Now take off the genjutsu, and tell us everything you know," said Temari, "Or you will die. Slowly."

Silence. Then…

"Troublesome woman. You could have just _asked_."

His name, as it turned out, was Nara Shikamaru, and he'd been there to steal food and blankets and get out. And the second boy, the one that came in through the ceiling, was called Choji and the two of them were even more lost than Naruto (who had been in hot pursuit of mysterious intruders, apparently, before he slammed into Appa) had been when he found their camp.

"This entire thing is like the plot of some bad story," complained Shikamaru lazily—he seemed to do everything lazily, like making a big deal out of changing worlds overnight would be overkill— "It's like the world is run by morons or something." The boy had listened impassively through the explanation of benders and the Avatar being an incarnation of the world, and seemed thoroughly bored with it all. "Whatever. Let's just get out of here, then."

"How?"

Shikamaru blinked once. "I have no idea. I'll work on it."

Choji grinned. Naruto scowled. Shikamaru yawned.

"What's the big furry thing sitting outside?"

"That's Appa," said Aang, and Momo chattered at him insistently for a few seconds, reminding him that the big furry glutton wasn't the only one who needed an introduction. "-and this is Momo."

"It looks soft. Comfortable. I'm going to go sleep on it."

"Wait!"

The teenager half-turned, raising one inquiring eyebrow at Sokka's rumpled clothes, twitching eye and haphazard ponytail, then sighed.

"For heaven's sake_. What_?"

"What did you do to us? Who are you people? Why are _we_ carrying _you_ around! W_hat is going on here?_"

"Excellent questions," drawled Nara, and kept walking.

"So _answer them!_"

"…No."

"Hey!"

"Troublesome woman, did you guys explain _anything_ to these people?"

Temari scowled at him. "Yeah."

"Then why is it that he's even more clueless than a first-year academy student? Please, enlighten me."

"Well…"

"We told them the important stuff, ja."

Shikamaru, now looking thoroughly annoyed, turned to glare noncommittally at Kankuro instead.

"Important like… 'What is a ninja?"

"I don't think anyone ever really explained that, no," said Katara. Naruto had the presence of mind to look vaguely ashamed. The sand ninja did not.

"That's not important," stated Temari flatly. "They don't need to know all that. They don't _want_ to know all that. In fact, the less they know, the better things will go for them. Butt out, Nara." The two of them locked eyes for a second, then, without another word, the boy slouched away, vanishing outside into the light.

Temari sat back, looking considerably disgruntled. "Lazy _brat_."

"Are we all done shouting now?" asked Toph. No one answered. "Good. Now, what the heck was _that_?"

"What?" Asked Naruto, looking surprised by her sudden vehemence,"What was what?"

"That stuff we saw when he showed up! The cave-in and the..." She paused, listening, as her feet picked up their expressions. "You didn't see it, did you?"

"I saw..." Katara shivered, remembering, "-I saw something else."

"I didn't see anything," said Aang, and his voice sank to a murmur. "...Anyone. You were all gone, except for a guy with white hair."

"I didn't see anything either," snapped Sokka, although his voice cracked slightly. "There was nothing there, it was just like that freaky swamp. It was all an illusion."

Temari nodded. "Yes, it was. That was a genjutsu—an illusion. It was all in our heads. If that really _was_ Nara's he's improved since the Chuunin exams. There's no way he would have pulled something like that off a few years ago."

"Genjutsu?"

"Right."

"What are-?"

"Not important," Kankuro interrupted firmly. "Freaky pictures in your head. Some people specialize in them, where we come from. I never liked him much though. They can be worse than that, too."

There was a subdued silence, then Toph spoke up decidedly.

"Not worse than that."

There were a few surreptitious nods of agreement from the assembled members of the gAang, but Temari cut them off, shaking her head slowly. She opened her mouth, shut it, then opened it again, as though she couldn't put words around what she wanted to say.

"Do you know... what it feels like to have your throat slit?"

Nobody answered. Nobody seemed sure if they should or not; Temari looked deadly serious.

"My dad showed me. When I was _eight_, we started genjutsu training, until I could see an enemy genin die in front of me without blinking. That was what the _fourth kazekage_-" her voice soured on the last two words, full of barely suppressed strong emotion, "-wanted from his perfect shinobi."

"You-"

"That's why you shouldn't get to involved with us," continued Temari as though she'd just come to the conclusion, crossing her arms resolutely. "We might have brought enemies with the same skills along with us."

"Enemies that _kill_, ja."

Kankuro and Gaara half-glanced towards each other, then both looked away again-obviously neither had been expecting to actually make eye-contact with the other. Naruto was looking at Gaara from his corner, unusually quiet and solemn. Temari was doing a very good job of hiding it, but her eyes also flicked towards her youngest brother, her face momentarily blank. The silence stretched on and slowly, all eyes turned towards Gaara, trying to see what the shinobi were finding so interesting. Gaara himself was staring at the ground, his strange, blood-red hair shading his eyes.

After almost a full 30 seconds of intense silence, Gaara seemed to come back to earth. He looked around at the eyes fixed on him, then sighed heavily and stood up.

"If you're going to tell them the story, at least have the respect to ask me to leave first. You don't have to stare at me like that."

"I wasn't going to tell them anything," said Temari, resolutely dignified. "If you want to tell them, you'll have to do it yourself."

"Tell us what," broke in Toph, "and why are we all looking at Gaara? Did he suddenly change colors or something?"

"No," said Aang, "we don't know why we're looking at Gaara. Except that _they_ were looking at Gaara. So Gaara's going to tell us?"

"I never said I wanted to tell anyone anything," said the boy in question, looking slightly disgruntled, "when did that idea get into the conversation, pray tell?"

"You told us not to tell them, ja. They're not going to believe that they're in danger till you hammer it into their heads, so someone has to tell the story."

Gaara turned to his brother, raising one non-existent eye-brow.

"Then why don't you tell your story?" The barest hint of sarcasm crept into the red-head's voice. "Oh infinitely wise big brother?"

"Then I would have to tell yours as well."

"Well if-"

"Just tell the stupid story already!"

Toph rocked the ground underneath them, breaking off the argument before Temari, who had started to open her mouth, could join in. She glared around at all of them, blind, grey-green eyes sharp.

"If you're suddenly so convinced that we're in danger, then he's right-I need proof."

There was a long silence, then...

"Fine," sighed Gaara. "But I'll have to start at the very beginning."

Outside, Shikamaru listened to the vague murmur of voices inside the cave, letting his brain filter out the occasional comments, the raised voices, and the quiet scream when someone-probably the girl in blue, she seemed the type more than the short, green, angry one-heard something to do with uncles and assassinations. It sounded troublesome. No wonder the kid was so messed up when he turned up at the Chuunin exams.

After that there was a good deal of talking about nothing in particular, during which the loud voice of the ponytail boy got even louder, asking questions about weapons and jutsu, then loud shushing. The drone resumed. Shikamaru stared at the clouds and played a few shogi games in his head, letting his subconscious pick the story out of the scattered words.

"Pulled his bones out—called a _bloodline limit_—"

"Learned...Kuroari...two puppets, which is—"

"—lazy kid was...have died if I hadn't shown up."

"—ruler of the nation, but the demon—"

"…they're calling themselves the 'Rising Sun'."

"What do you mean, '_died_'?" said one voice finally, much louder and clearer than the others had been, "You expect us to-"

"Yes, I do."

"But-"

More _shush_-ing. The kazekage-kid's story started again, but only for a few seconds. Then, slowly, it faded out, leaving a contemplative silence.

"But I don't know what happened, exactly, while I was dead. It's your turn, Kankuro, Temari."

"-called Sasori," started a new voice, "-one of the greatest puppeteers ever. So-"

Shikamaru gave up on Shogi. The day was getting warm, the clouds were still free, the whatever-it-was that he was lying on was soft and almost as lazy as he was. He closed his eyes and let his mind drift away from him.

"But...Chiyo, she was-?"

"Already dead," confirmed Gaara quietly. The other three ninja bowed their heads for a second, and under the weight of the respect palpable in the air, every other head bowed with them.

"We left after they buried the old lady," said Naruto quietly, "headed back to Konoha. I wouldn't want to tackle one of those Akatsuki people without backup. They're dangerous, and strong. Kakashi-sensei and I barely took down that crazy explosion freak.

"So now you've heard our story," murmured Temari, and her eyes met Aang's, neutral and emotionless.

"What will you do now?"

**Ooo... what indeed? Well, you'll probably have to wait, like, three years to find out. :) Sad, but true. Besides, next chapter is probably going to be another 'everyone else' chapter, so that draws out the suspense even more. :) Okay**...

**moon eclipse shadows: Thank you! Since that is the purpose of fiction, I'll consider this a job fairly done. :)**

**winterfantasy: Heheh... Soon... yeah... Thank you for reading anyway, despite my deplorable update schedule.**

**pennyarcadefan2: Lee is fun. You can go way out there with his personality and no one complains. Other than that, I'm afraid I've rather disappointed your hopes. I'm a freakishly slow writer, I know.**

**SGWLESSIUT: Love this review!**

**The Spirit Alchemist: Kiba's going to start a paradox sometime in the future, but somehow, I don't think he cares. :) I was quite proud of that idea.**

**Yumetaka Kourui: And if you wrote as slowly as I do, only your grandchildren would make a profit. I'm truly flattered that you think so, though. :D**

**dragonsandpikminrock: Shut up, you skinny little freak. ;)**

**CaramelTromboneGirl: Fair enough. Sometimes it even varies just because of the colorists for different episodes-I wasn't sure which color to go with. '^.^ And Lee is oodles of fun to write. :)**

**darthgamer: Thanks. I'll write it.**

**Madnesslover: Thank you.**


	11. OKAY LET'S GET THIS OUT IN THE OPEN

OKAY! I know I've been completely AWOL for the past three+ years; I am now a high school graduate. But think about the stupidest little freshman you can imagine starting a great huge complicated fanfic like this without a single plan, and you tell me if _you_ would expect them to finish it. I can't justify my flagrant lack of updates, but these are the things you guys should know.

1. I still have not given up on this story. As ridiculous as this may seem, if I had lost all hope of working on this again I would have given it up for adoption or at least notified everyone that I was dropping it. It's just that every time I try to look it over and figure out what to do next I realize that I did no planning whatsoever. It's like I started painting a deck at random and ended up painting myself into a corner. This brings me to my next point.

2. You guys are likely to get a new chapter at some point in the future, it is true. But I can't promise it will be exceptionally speedy and before that happens…I'm going to need to go right back to the beginning and rewrite. This whole fic is littered with writing that makes me cringe and characterization I don't like at all, it doesn't happen in any set time frame, I have no idea what's going to happen next and I lose whole groups of people for huge chunks of time (hey, do you guys know what happened to Shino and Tenten? No? Me neither...). This is not acceptable. If you guys want more, which apparently you do, I'm going to have to redux this, this time knowing from the beginning how it's going to go.

3. Most of the reason I started writing this, young and foolish as I was, was because I wanted to see about four things happen and I just threw the characters into the same place to achieve that, thus the ham-handed explanation of 'well they're just there okay'. I've been thinking it might actually be easier to write this story, get you guys updates, write what I want to write, and not eat up most of my life with this story (because I have three other stories in the works that all promise to be in the 60,000+ word count range and at least one of those is already updating—those reviewers also deserve updates, although I acknowledge that you guys have been waiting longer) is to write the rest of it in snapshots, kind of like oneshots but much longer and more detailed, showing the _exciting_ part of any crossover; the points where two or more characters from different universes come into conflict or discover something new thanks to the crossover. Basically, I would like to cut out the in between like a lazy bum and just write the fun parts.

4. Guys, I have no idea how this is supposed to end. This story not only doesn't have a plot, but I don't know how to close off the loose ends. I have an idea, but it would involve...

A: sending the ninja back to their own world completely and having the entire Avatar universe go differently.

B: Sending a copy of the ninja back to their world, the copies being exactly the same as the originals were when they came.

C: the ninja stay in the Avatar world, making the _Naruto_ universe a complete AU because all the most important characters vanish at ages between 14 and 17 and never come back, dooming the world to die in the Great Ninja War a few months later. (Although the Akatsuki wouldn't be pleased to find out that the nine-tails had vanished to another world, I suppose…that would certainly put a crimp in their plans.)

Any way I spin it there are questions and little personal tragedies that have to be addressed, and it's going to be sad no matter what I do, _especially_ if there are anything even _approaching_ serious crossover romances.

Okay, wall of words done with…Questions, Comments, Concerns? Hate mail? I kind of deserve it for abandoning you guys with no word, so feel free to lay into me if you want. I can't promise I won't delete it for the sake of others who want to review, but I promise I will read it and feel penitent. : I In the meantime, I'm copy-pasting the entirety of TCtF (may have to change the title, that title is a terrible sentence fragment, ew) into Word and working out a plan, then starting an overhaul. Time to man up, haul this sucker out of my closet, and make a decision.

Yours in sincere contrition,

-CV

**Edit: Finished the prologue. Should I add them as I go and risk anyone who comes in in the middle of this having no idea what's going on and leaving because the story doesn't make any sense at all (it's like sewing my freshman legs to my senior body)? Or should I just update on here every time I finish rewriting a chapter in my documents and then update them all in one go so nobody has any transition pains? I'm leaning towards the latter, especially since I have looked at a map and charted the whole thing out by landing site and the plot is going to have to legit change. I'll get nasty comments telling me I'm doing plot-holes when really I'm just stuck on the next chapter. **

**Thoughts?  
**


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